Silicon Valley trip tomorrow

Six young CPC students are off for a five-day trip to California on Saturday, courtesy of Intel and their own ingenuity in coming up with a medical-based iPhone app and hardware, writes Brian Byrne.

Their idea for an iPhone case with an inbuilt diabetes testing and emergency treatment kit won them out against 12 other second level teams from schools across Ireland in the Intel Youth Enterprise Ideation competition earlier this year.

And the five days they will spend in California will bring them up close an personal to what's arguably the most fertile part of the world for innovation, the fabled 'Silicon Valley' near San Francisco.

Companies working in the valley account for a third of all the venture capital funding in the United States. Among the highest flyers with headquarters in the area are Adobe Systems, Apple, eBay, Intel, Sun Microsystems, Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, and Hewlett-Packard.

The team comprises Aaron McLoughlin-Sutherland, Godwin Jalanga, Bevan Murray, Robyn Kenny, Caoimhe O'Fearghaill, and Wayne Donohoe. They previously won out against other TY teams from the school at the end of the first Intel Ideation Workshop in CPC in February, organised by Kilcullen Lions Club.

The team's concept includes an app which will give instant blood sugar reading from a blood test strip inserted into a computerised reader that's part of the case. If blood sugar is low, the app will tell the owner to take some sugar gel that's part of the kit, and if it is critical a phone message with GPS location and details will be automatically sent to the owner's doctor and parents.

It's the first year the Intel Youth Enterprise Ideation Camp scheme has been run in Ireland, in partnership with the Lions Club of Ireland. Some 1,500 students took part in the competition in this country, from schools as far apart as Skibereen, Kinsale, Tullamore and Carrickmacross.