2018 Innovation winners presented

This year’s Innovation award winners include an app that can classify skin conditions, a social enterprise project to tackle homelessness, a digital records project hosting up to 40,000 academic records and a rapid diagnostic technology to pinpoint diseases in the blood within fifteen minutes.

The 2018 Innovation Award winners:

• Student Category (joint overall winners) Russell Brady and Cathal Hughes for their skin condition classifier app which uses image analysis and machine learning to automatically diagnose the most commonly occurring skin conditions. Over 73,000 people suffer from psoriasis while eczema occurs in 1 in 10 children and 1 in 20 adults. One peculiarity about skin conditions is that they are difficult to diagnose and can be costly and expensive. The award winning project by the two School of Computing students set out to create an app that saves people time and money and can provide an assessment of what the condition is. The app also includes a link to the Health Service Executive website giving an indicator of the likely type of skin conditions and the next steps to follow. 
• James Gallagher was also among the winning recipients for founding Giveback.ie a social enterprise based on an innovative App with a mission to tackle the homelessness crisis through crowd-funding. The mission of Giveback.ie is to become a catalyst for real social change funding Housing First initiatives by the Peter McVerry Trust which builds social housing and renovates existing derelict buildings to provide the homeless with suitable long-term accommodation. Giveback.ie enables socially conscious individuals to give back to Irish homeless charities through the click of a mouse by partnering with hundreds of Irish retailers so that when you make a purchase online a portion of your total spend will go to the Peter McVerry Trust.
• In the Academic and Research Category, Professor Robert Forster, Dr Elaine Spain and Dr Kellie Adamson and Ms. Eadaoin Carthy from the School of Chemical Sciences and National Centre for Sensor Research respectively were recognised for the development of a patent pending platform technology SepTec that combines smart microfluidic engineering and sensor technology to enable the rapid capture, detection and differentiation of micro-organisms that can cause infection in the blood. SepTec will target the sepsis diagnostic market. Sepsis is a life-threatening inflammation from infection and represents 30% of all hospital-based deaths and up to 40% of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients. Throughout developing countries sepsis is accountable for up to 70% of deaths annually and globally there are over 30 million cases of diagnosed sepsis each year. SepTec aims to revolutionise healthcare by developing easy-to-use clinical diagnostic solutions that can provide rapid and accurate results enabling clinicians to effectively treat patients faster than has been achieved before. 
• In the Administration and Support Category, the DCU Registry Team were honoured for the development and implementation of a Digital Records Projects, which involved taking permanent ownership of tens of thousands of student academic records from multiple institutions following Incorporation. It involved the safe processing and storage of up to 40,00 academic records, available on request from relevant parties. 

President of Dublin City University Professor Brian MacCraith said:

“This year's Innovation Awards celebrate the excellence of staff and students in transforming lives and societies by combining enterprise and creativity in their daily activities. They also reflect the university’s strong commitment to engagement with wider society as evidenced by award-winning projects. This year's entries and overall winners are a testament to the mission of this university.”