Health care and painting apps win top prizes in 2012 Ericsson Application Awards

Mobile health-care app developed in Africa wins first prize in the company category
Painting and chatting app wins first prize in the student category
Medico-social platform that provides access to medical information wins Technology for Good prize
Ericsson today proudly announced the winners of the 2012 Ericsson Application Awards.

This is the third consecutive year that the awards have been held. This year’s theme, in cooperation with Sony Mobile, was the Networked Society. Students and small- and medium-sized enterprises were invited to submit Android applications that had been built using at least one Ericsson Labs API.

In all, 143 teams from more than 50 countries took part and a total of 242 ideas, videos and apps were submitted – twice as many as last year. Developers in Africa and China were particularly active.

Four finalist teams from China, Egypt and Kenya showcased their apps before an expert jury that later declared a winner in each of the two categories: students and companies. Each winning team received EUR 15,000 and the runners up EUR 10,000.

The winner in the company category was team MedAfrica from Kenya, with an app that seeks to improve the health of communities and regions in Africa by increasing access to health-care information and services via mobile phone.

The jury’s justification was: "For the potential to bring important information to many people and give them the power and knowledge to take better care of their communities."

Team member Caroline Ngugi said: "We are really excited that MedAfrica is recognized on a global platform as being a service that can provide content in emerging markets on health."

In the student category, the winner’s check went to team Clio Squad from China for their Clio Super Painter app, which enables a new style of painting and chatting on Android phones or tablets, thereby providing a new means of communication.

The jury’s justification was: "This reward goes to a cute application that brings people together in a simple and intuitive way with a lot of potential for further development."

Team member Shuyuan Ma said: "It’s like a dream; we never imagined that we would win the first prize."

Second place in the student category was awarded to team 4Plus from South China University of Technology. Their FriendScape app uses location-based services to provide a more friendly and attractive means of retrieving friends’ recommendations, coupons, merchandize information, and so on.

Jan Färjh, Head of Ericsson Research and host of the awards, said: "Med Africa and Clio Super Painter are two excellent examples of applications in the Networked Society. We are very proud of highlighting the team’s achievements.

"We want to encourage open innovation and attract developers, and get in contact with them. We want their feedback on our APIs and what is needed to get developers to use the functionality in our systems. And to get this going, we decided to start an application competition."

At the awards ceremony, Ericsson also announced that team Nabda Care from Egypt had won the special Technology for Good prize for their Health Book application. The jury’s justification was: "The prize is awarded to a team that has not only met the EAA criteria, but also chose a subject that can make a difference. The Nabda Care solution uses mobile and cloud technology in a scalable solution enabling people and society access to affordable health-care services".