A team of UALR students will represent the United States at the World Imagine Cup Finals sponsored by Microsoft Corp. in Warsaw, Poland, July 3 to 8, with their IT application to identify and track the immunizations needed by children in the least developed countries of the world.

Patricia Day of Hot Springs and Shawn McGhee of Sherwood – both management information systems students – competed in an international category – “Embedded” – which requires the creation of an application and a scaled-down version of Windows.

“Basically, they had to customize a ‘compact edition’ operating systems platform which will run on a small hand-held device,” said Dr. Janet Bailey, associate professor of MIS. “They are also creating a prototype of the physical device.”

According to the World Health Organization, 500,000 children die every year from measles – one per minute – because they lack immunization. The UALR team’s application and device will help heath care workers from the WHO, UNICEF, and other world children’s heath organizations identify and track the immunizations needed by and given to children in developing countries, thereby saving thousands of lives.

Only two U.S teams – including UALR – made the World Finals in the major Imagine Cup categories and three other U.S. teams won special award categories. They include team of graduate students in the Institute for Economic Advancement in UALR’s College of Business.

The UALR team won the Windows Azure Award for a computer platform designed to make medical data available to researchers around the world.

“The Microsoft Imagine Cup competition is the equivalent of the IT Olympics and very prestigious for our campus,” Bailey said. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – this is proof our students at UALR are among the best in the world.”

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