A group of six Year 13 students (from left to right; Samuel, Poppy, Zaki, Molly, Farouk & Precious) recently participated in the prestigious Imperial College Science in Medicine School Teams Prize 2024. Out of 234 submissions, their entry was shortlisted to the final ten, an impressive achievement that speaks volumes about their dedication and hard work. These students put in tremendous effort to create an outstanding poster showcasing their innovative ideas and research skills; they designed a portable self-diagnostic immunoassay and symptoms log-in test kit for refugees and internally displaced persons, with the aim to diagnose infectious diseases.

They presented their work to a panel of 11 esteemed academics from the Imperial College, and are now eagerly awaiting the results. Regardless of the outcome, we are incredibly proud of their hard work and accomplishments in reaching the final stage of such a competitive event. We are confident that they have incredible futures ahead of them!

See Farouk’s account of the challenge below…

“Our medical society needed a challenge, so we came across the Imperial Science in Medicine Competition. It was the perfect opportunity to work as a team, learn more about science and technology and enhance our university applications. The competition aimed to think beyond the school curriculum and consider how trends in science and technology will impact on health and medicine in the future. We therefore formed a team of people with varied interests from science to AI to design with the hope of demonstrating a multidisciplinary approach. There were 5 medicine-related categories to choose from, each requiring the team to produce a detailed e-poster showing an innovative solution to an important medical issue.

Out of these categories we chose to enter the Global Health Prize since it was a broad topic which incorporated all of our interests. For this competition we formed an innovative idea which was aimed at aiding refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) weeks to months after a major natural or man made disaster. Once we chose this topic we narrowed our focus, researching into medical help that is already in place for these people such as the work done by Médecins Sans Frontières. This helped us to find gaps in delivering medical support allowing us to come up with a unique idea.

The innovation that we came up with was called CheckMate, a testing kit that diagnoses a wide variety of infectious diseases following war or natural disaster. The device will give out a swab much like the lateral flow tests we used in Covid-19, and a user feeds it back into the kit for processing. Artificial intelligence is combined with antigen-antibody testing to indicate whether any particular disease is present. This is followed by professional healthcare advice on where to find the necessary treatment. The vision we had with our device was to create a feasible and reliable way to test large numbers of displaced people, with the hope of minimising the effects of disease outbreak. We treated CheckMate much like how a standard product would come to market, looking into cost-analysis and the suitability of certain materials.

After a long wait over the summer holidays, it was finally announced that we had been shortlisted along with 10 other schools for the finals, out of a total of 45 who entered. Upon returning to school, our team got to work in preparation to pitch our device online to a panel of doctors and Imperial academics. It was a nerve wracking task to present in front of the competing teams in our 7-minute slot, then to be asked about the device in a Q&A session. We each managed to talk through our individual contributions to the competition and how we worked together successfully to create CheckMate.

In conclusion, participating in the Imperial Medicine Competition as a team was a highly rewarding experience. We practiced problem solving, broadened our knowledge, and collaborated effectively. This competition not only tested our skills but also strengthened our teamwork and dedication to the field of medicine. We look forward to seeing where it takes us in the future!”