In photo: Team SymbIoT

Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced the winner of AWS Hackdays “Hack for Good 2019″ for the Philippines. Team SymbIoT presented its innovative solution, gluCOmeter, a pain-free and cost-saving blood sugar measurement tool.

The team will represent the country at the AWS Hackdays 2019 Asean Grand Finale set to take place at the AWS Summit Singapore 2019 on April 10.

“We would like to congratulate SymbIoT on their well-deserved win with their impressive solution which truly reflects this year’s AWS Hackdays theme of ‘Hack for Good’,” said Nick Walton, managing director for Asean, AWS. “We are encouraged by the responses we have received, and it’s exciting to see how developers use AWS technologies including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT), and data analytics to build applications which drive positive impact and improve our quality of life in Southeast Asia.”

“I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes three years ago and something I always found challenging was having to prick my finger each time I wanted to check my blood sugar,” said member Reinier Veral.

Reinier then sought to think of another way of monitoring blood sugar levels, also taking note that Filipinos have such a sweet tooth. In 2017, an alarming 3,721,900 diabetes cases were reported by the International Diabetes Federation in the Philippines. Hailing from an IT background, he enlisted the expertise of his colleagues at work and together, developed the winning solution after six months of work.

Later on, GluCOmeter leveraged the AWS IoT Platform as an MQTT broker, requiring users to only exhale into the device to have their blood sugar checked. In addition to being a non-invasive solution, it saves users 50% on what they would usually have to spend.

“We are excited about the win and are motivated to build the second version, creating a more robust platform with a wide breadth of AWS tools and services at our disposal,” said Marek Gańko, Reinier’s teammate. “In the near future, we are looking into developing an offline component as well as exploring the concept of wearables.”

AWS Hackdays is an annual education and hackathon event held across six countries in Southeast Asia. This year, builders in the region are encouraged to showcase their innovation and demonstrate skills in AI and ML, IoT, data analytics, or modern applications centered on the areas of HealthTech, AgriTech, Smart City, or FinTech.

This year’s Hackdays saw a total of 350 teams place their entries online, with their submissions including the use of AWS services such as Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Polly, Amazon Lex, as well as AWS IoT services. These solutions were then evaluated by a judging panel based on innovation, business impact, implementation, and user experience. Five teams were then selected to pitch and demonstrate their solutions.

At the AWS Hackdays 2019 ASEAN Grand Finale in Singapore, SymbIoT will compete with the winners from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam for the coveted grand prize: An all-expense paid trip to attend the world’s top cloud conference — AWS re:Invent 2019 in Las Vegas, United States, on Dec. 2-6, 2019.