PE-5 Funky Medics
Business: Funky Medics
Business contact: Phil Rowlands phil@funkymedics.com
Background
Funky Medics, working with international health professionals,
delivers multi‐platform innovative and creative health education. The
concept is knowledge through a simple and entertaining delivery and the
aim is empowerment to enable prevention of lifestyle problems and
management of genetic conditions. To engender individual and community
interaction, Funky Medics want to develop a mobile and web‐based
application on two levels; one to provide user friendly access to the
different medical condition bases and secondly to provide a multi
purpose tool that will ‘nudge’ interactivity with messages, condition
management controls and access to a particular community. At present
Funky Medics are developing a Pan India diabetes project with the
Diabetes Foundation of India and other Indian and UK based medical and
creative collaborators. So the first direct real use of this
application would be for this project. It is a challenge, both in its
size and multiplicity of delivery, right across the cultural, social
and economic span of India. The cheapness and vast coverage of mobile
phone use there gives this sort of application development a real and
exciting potential and the delivery possibilities, from audio through
to visual, a creative challenge.
Objectives:
1) To get the message out there using state‐of‐the‐art technology.
Why mobiles? Because whilst a great deal of the world don't have
computers or broadband access, mobile phones exist in some of the
poorest countries of the world. Practically every young person over the
age of 12 has one!
2) Promoting a positive message: You might have a medical condition but
it's not the end of your life ... empowerment of the individual to take
control and manage his or her condition.
3) Interactivity: e.g. to link into the Funky Medics Website and be
able to download information relevant to the condition and receive
‘nudges’ for management and prevention…i.e. diabetes.
4) Initially to get the Diabetes messages out across India and
internationally but also create a format that can adapt to all medical
conditions.
Challenges
1) Keep it simple ... don't make it rocket science! It's important that the application can be used by ordinary Joe Bloggs!
2) Able to grow organically / link into local as well as other social networks such as Twitter etc.
3) Multi‐platform formats including different makes of mobile.
Skills / Technologies
1) Technical skills: Strong programming skills in Java Android, QT, C++ or C# and including avi
and media player in their programming.
2) Creativity: visual/audio/storytelling skills. The clips may be short but they have to be
powerful/entertaining.
3) The ability to use/create music ... it's the universal language that brings people together.
4) Entrepreneurship: the ability to 'think out of the box'.
PE-6 RNA Plants
Business: RNA Plant Ltd / Symltech Ltd
Business contact: Nick Beckett nick@rnaplant.co.uk Ph. 07779 297852
Background
In 2004 Symltech Ltd was formed as a joint venture company to
develop a remote worker management system for construction plant
operator RNA Plant Ltd. The developed system called Glimpse™ comprises
an MS SQL database, a desktop application, some middleware and a
Windows Mobile application. Glimpse has been successfully used by RNA
since 2005 bringing numerous efficiency benefits. In order for the
system to continue in use, it needs some updating.
Project
The Glimpse mobile client was originally developed in VB.net for
the Windows Mobile 2003 platform and has subsequently been updated for
Windows Mobile 6.5. However operating system and hardware limitations
have meant that multi‐threading parts of the application was
impossible. We would like to rewrite the application to take advantage
of the multi‐threading abilities of the Android OS and the improved
user interface features it provides. Today’s capacitive touchscreen
phones struggle with digital signature capture. Finding a workable
practical solution to this challenge is an important part of the
project.
Challenges
The main issues to be resolved in the project are:
• Streamline the login process
• Ensure background tasks do not interfere with user activity
• Redesign interface to:
o Make better use of increased screen size
o Make use of ‘touch’ specific controls
• Evaluate and implement the ‘best possible’ solution for signature capture
Skills / Technologies
Technologies and skills relevant to this project are:
• Android OS
• Java Programming
• GPS / Mapping
• XML
• FTP
• HCI Design
• Graphic Design
For further background on RNA Plant,Ltd, Symltech and Glimpse, please visit the following websites:
www.rnaplant.co.uk www.symltech.co.uk