Solving real world problems

Year 10 IST students Alysia Rostirolla and Apostoleia Moulos placed in the top 10 entries in the country in the Microsoft Imagine Cup Junior Competition 2022. As one of more than 500 entries from across Australia the girls wowed Microsoft with their idea for an Artificial Intelligence system that would improve communication between hospitals and patients’ families, hoping to deliver and interpret medical results in a timely manner using layman’s terminology.

ALYSIA AND APOSTOLEIA DESCRIBED WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE COMPETITION:

We created a concept that uses AI for good in the world. We chose to focus on how we could help combat the shortage of medical professionals in hospitals and the information gap between patients’ families and medical professionals.

In the last three years our hospitals have been overtaken by COVID19 and as a result, there has been a significant strain on the medical field with the normal number of hospitalisations plus all the COVID19 patients. This has caused a shortage of medical professionals in hospitals and constraints on how much time they spend with families of patients. We created an AI concept called ‘CONNECTo’ that collects and uses data within the hospitals’ database and interprets that data to terminology that the patient and their family can easily understand, using problem solving and linguistic AI. For example, if a family member is in the hospital and has had a blood test taken, a nurse will log the blood test results into the hospital’s database. The AI in our software will take the blood test results, and will interpret them into simple terms, then explain the blood test results and decipher whether certain levels are higher or lower than others. A family member of the patient will be able to log into the app, view the blood test results, and the explanation of those results.

This competition was challenging, but it enabled us to master a range of new skills while utilising new technologies to solve real world problems.

Scan the QR code to watch CONNECTo.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was one of the world’s greatest thinkers. He perceived the interconnected nature of knowledge and embraced learning with a lifelong passion and determination to discover the unknown.

The da Vinci Decathlon competition places a particular emphasis on higher order thinking, problem solving and creativity.

This year in teams of eight, our students explored the theme ‘patterns’ and how this applies to the disciplines – Art and Poetry, Cartography, Code Breaking, Creative Producers, Engineering, English, Mathematics, Science, Ideation and Legacy – a discipline that recognises the achievements of Leonardo da Vinci, significant people and inventions and significant events from the past and present.

We celebrate the talents of our da Vinci students through their commendable achievements and their effort to strive to understand and see the interconnected nature of all things.

The students achieved commendable results, with placings across most of the ten disciplines including the hard-toachieve first, second and third placing and overall placing.