The Science on the Swan Health and Wellbeing Ideation/Hack took place 3-4 May. The event ran alongside a conference where fifteen international speakers and many of Australia’s top researchers and experts from multiple disciplines spoke on their latest discoveries and advances in health and biotechnology.
Science on the Swan was initiated and run by all five of WA’s universities (The University of Western Australia, Curtin University, Murdoch University, Edith Cowan University and the University of Notre Dame), the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, the Telethon Kids Institute, WA Health Translation Network, the key teaching and research hospitals and the WA Government through the Department of Health and the Office of Science.
The Ideation/Hack focused on burns management, revisualising medical results, and improving the inaccuracies of BMI. Doctors, surgeons, and scientists, including renowned plastic surgeon Fiona Wood, introduced the key areas and formed the judging panel. SCBC took two students, Graham Duxbury and Keely Jones, to compete in the Hack. Teaming up with two students from Comet Bay College, Graham Duxbury and Keely Jones were up against five other teams of mainly Perth Modern students. After presenting their research at the end of the first day, they got to work on creating an idea to show how BMI is not an accurate indicator of obesity or future health issues. Their idea not only did that, but also provided savings to insurance companies and consumers.
The pressure increased during the final pitch in the evening of day two, when a number of the conference experts came to watch and ask questions of the teams. After a nervous wait our team came through placing third overall, each receiving $100 cash. Congratulations to Graham and Keely.
Their next challenge is to compete for $5000 at the end of term 2 in the state-wide Just Start IT program currently running in AIT.