Indian team wins $15,000 award for fake drug detection app

A three-member team from India has won an award with a prize money of USD 15,000 as part of Microsoft Imagine Cup for designing an app that detects counterfeit drug.

Team DrugSafe from India won the special award under Big Data category at the 2018 edition of the Microsoft Imagine Cup world championship held in Redmond, US, Microsoft said in a statement.

Team DrugSafe, along with two other teams from Nepal and the US, received USD 15,000 in cash prize and USD 30,000 Azure grant to help further its endeavour.

DrugSafe team members - Chidroop I, Pratik Mohapatra, and Srihari HS, who are students of R V College of Engineering (Bengaluru) aim to address the growing global issue of counterfeit drugs by helping people verify the authenticity of medicines, the statement said.

They were one of the three student teams representing India at the global finals.

The app uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to identify minute details in the design and packaging of medicines and compare them to the original manufacturer's patented and trademarked attributes. After three levels of checks, discrepancies are flagged to help users identify medicines as counterfeit, Microsoft said.

The overall winner of Microsoft Imagine Cup 2018 was a Canadian team -- Team smartARM -- which built a functional robotic prosthetic hand, powered by Microsoft Azure. The hand is equipped with a camera embedded in the palm to help recognise objects and calculate the most appropriate grip for the object.

The team will receive USD 85,000 cash prize, an Azure grant worth USD 50,000 along with a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

This year, 49 teams from 33 countries, were selected to travel to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond to showcase their solutions.

Team iCry2Talk from Greece, which came second, showcased a project that enables parents to decipher the message behind a baby's crying in real-time.

The low-cost, non-invasive intelligent technology associates the cries with specific physiological and psychological states, depicting the results in a text, image, and a voice message, the statement said.

Team Mediated Ear from Japan clinched the third place with their software for hearing-impaired individuals that allows focus on a specific speaker among a multitude of conversations through the help of deep learning.

Held annually since 2003, the Microsoft Imagine Cup has seen engagement from nearly 1.8 million students from over 190 countries till date.