By Yinka Lawal |

Four students of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, ABUAD, will represent Africa in the finals of the most prestigious global student technology programme” holding next month in United States of America.

The three Computer Science students and a Mechanical Engineering student of the five-year-old university qualified for the finals of the 2015 Microsoft Incorporation-organised Imagine Club competition for inventing Asthmavisor, a device for efficient management of asthma, particularly among children.

The ABUAD founder, Aare Afe Babalola, said  that “the foursome of Adeyemo Kayode, Raymond Obinaju, Sobola David and Ahwin Kevin with a joint passion for saving lives, have continually been seeking to leverage on technology to make healthcare more efficient, accessible and reliable particularly as it affects the rural dwellers.”

Babalola said the institution’s focus on research, entrepreneur development, functional areas of life and learning was paying off with “groundbreaking achievements.” He said the solution proffered by the four students under the aegis of Team Lifewatch “will help patients to be more conscious of their environment and will provide a reminder of what their physician has advised them to avoid.

“The software also provides an automatic alert, which is triggered by change in environmental condition as detected by the sensors in the wearable device. Asthmavisor further helps the patient alert a selected list of emergency contacts in case he or she is not able to handle an attack.”

According to him, other benefits of Asthmavisor to asthma patients include provision of helpful healthy tips that could prolong the life of patients and crucial supervisory role-playing and monitoring as well as creating avenue for patients to track their attacks and log crucial information.

The ABUAD students qualified for the finals after having identified a major health problem and proffered a novel solution using available technology to win the competition among universities in Nigeria and as well defeated other African countries in the semi-finals.

Babalola, who took pride in the exploits of ABUAD students in the area of research and inventions, said the feat came nine months after a 300-level student in College of Medicine and Health Sciences of the university wrote a well-researched scientific paper on the deadly Ebola Virus Disease that ravaged and traumatised the country last year.