By Dory’s Team
This is a spotlight of 2020 Regional Winner DORY’S TEAM, who created the app Qhawana to help Alzheimer’s patients stay safe and help their caregivers keep track of them.
What was it like to work together as a team on a project?
Sandra: It was fun and interesting to work with my partner since despite the age difference between us, each one gave the best of herself – we took advantage of each of our abilities to the fullest and united all that so that the project would come out as well as possible.
Valentina: It was fun and honestly my partner was the best I have ever had XD Sandra you are the best 🙂 The plus of the team were our mentors, who are our parents, and who with great patience guided us and encouraged us to finish the project.
What problem does your project solve? How does it work?
We developed Qhawana, an app that helps prevent a person with Alzheimer’s from wandering and getting lost. With the help of artificial intelligence algorithms that process the movement of people, you can detect erratic or unusual movements caused by disorientation. When the app detects that an individual is starting to wander, alerts are sent to the caregiver or family member with the location of the individual in real time, and a community network is activated in case of loss, the community network involves neighbors, police , emergency services and local government.
What was the most difficult part of building your project?
Sandra: Personally it was the part of creating and training the AI algorithm, although we had the help of our mentors, we had to do a lot of research and inform ourselves a lot. After the research everything was trial and error, most of it was error but we then had experience and it was getting easier to keep moving forward.
Valentina: For me the most difficult thing was to develop the app with native code in “Android Studio”, it was a totally new experience since I only knew “Thunkable” block code. At first it was frustrating and I was about to abandon the project because I really It was very complex and difficult, there were many things that I did not understand but I was persistent and I did it! For me it was a great personal achievement.
What was your favorite part of building your project?
Sandra: It was the part of making the video for Technovation, since it was somewhat fun and I was also able to take care of the animations for the video, which I really enjoyed making.
Valentina: My favorite part was the pitch since we talked and explained what the app is and its functions, it was very fun to do although it took a little bit for me and my partner to do it.
What was your most proud moment during the construction process of your project?
Sandra: It was when our AI (artificial intelligence) was starting to work because it was a great pride to see it work and it was so to speak “the cherry on the cake” since with that our project could be completed.
Valentina: My moment of pride was when we finished the Android app and it was ready to integrate with the AI algorithm and after several attempts we made everything work.
Also seeing the finished pitch also made me very excited.
Do you want to continue working on your project? What will you do?
Sandra: Yes, because I think that this project can help many people with Alzheimer’s disease and it can be feasible if we put all our effort as we continue to do, we will implement the tracking of the individual in real time since at the moment they are only sent notifications with the location in real time, we will also implement a version of the application for smart