Microsoft has announced that the Romanian team, ENTy, was named as the overall winner of the company's 2016 Imagine Cup student technology competition. The ENTy team created a wearable device that is supposed to help doctors find inner ear problems in patients.
In a blog post announcing the winning team, Microsoft's Steve Guggenheimer stated:
During the final leg of their journey, Imagine Cup student finalists gained a number of valuable experiences – and inspired us every step of the way. They participated in a live hackathon and got to see first-hand just how powerful a few lines of code can be. The Garfield High gymnasium was transformed into a Robo World Cup Hackathon space where more than a 100 local high school students from the Boys & Girls Club and Garfield High joined Imagine Cup competitors. The hackathon, run by Microsoft Student Partners, helped students build and customize a robot kit using Windows 10 and Microsoft Azure, and tested their innovation in a World Cup style soccer style elimination tournament. The winners received an Xbox One, HP Spectre laptop and a World Cup trophy.On behalf of Microsoft, I'd like to offer Team ENTy and all the students who dreamed big and worked so hard throughout this year's Imagine Cup a hearty and well-deserved congratulations!
Here's a quick description of the ENTy team's device:
ENTy is a high-tech wearable device that tracks the balance of the internal ear and checks the spine posture in real time. In its current, beta form, ENTy is the size of a door key, is worn on the back or head and based on its unique algorithm and the data from the sensors (accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope), can tell if you have a good balance / problems with your internal ear and reproduces your posture in real time. Our product uniqueness consists in the fact that we have medical validation (we tested ENTy with doctors on 500 patients) and even the ENT doctors will use our device in their patient's diagnosis.
The team has previously been named as the winner of the Imagine Cup's Innovation category and will receive a $50,000 cash prize. The team members will now get a personal mentoring session from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella for being named as the overall winners.
