Nokia Africa Calling All Innovators - Winners!!
Posted in Competitions, Mobile on December 8th, 2009 by Wendy Robb – Tags: innovation, Mobile, nokia
Afridoctor
20Fourlabs, the innovation and applications division within Cape Town-based 24.com, walked away with the top honours last night in the Nokia Africa Calling All Innovators app competition. Their entry, Afridoctor, won the $85 000 first prize beating 125 other entries from developers all over Africa.
Afridoctor is Africa’s first personal mobile health clinic, turning your phone into a powerful first aid information kit, a doctor-location service, and an emergency distress notifier. Its revolutionary “SnapDiagnosis” system allows users to submit photos of their ailments and remotely receive advice from a panel of professionals. Afridoctor’s mapping feature enables users to find doctors, clinics and all health industry related services within their proximity.
The emergency feature notifies next of kin of their distress and location. Features include symptom checkers, first-aid information, health calculators and quizzes. Afridoctor helps make healthcare affordable and accessible to the people of Africa.
It was an idea that came organically from the 20fourlabs’ team. Teams within the innovation division were established and many brilliant ideas were put forward on ‘Alchemy’ the company’s internal idea voting engine. The ideas were then voted upon and in the end the Afridoctor application was chosen.
Within three weeks the app was designed, built and jam packed full of information from our content partner - Health24. Thanks to the 20fourlabs’ team, which included Werner Erasmus – a designer within Blueworld Communities, and Bradley Voges, a strategist and business manager we were able to not only meet the tight competition deadline but add a couple of fantastic features that were thought up along the way.
Afridoctor has enjoyed huge success since its official launch into the Nokia OVI app store – after 3 weeks of being available in the app store Afridoctor has been downloaded over 5500 times from users around the world. The application fills a void that currently exists in many African countries where there is a huge demand for basic health related information yet this information is not very reliable or easily accessible.
Thanks to all those within 20fourlabs for your help in designing and building the product. Thanks also go to Danie Pauw and the Health24 team for partnering with us on this project and supplying key content. It is a great honour for us to win the Nokia application competition and that is testament to our ability to innovate and rapidly execute brilliant ideas in limited time frames,
says Bradley Voges, Business Development Manager for BWCOM in 20fourlabs.
There are already serious discussions underway to expand Afridoctor and ensure the application reaches those who need it most - development has already begun to port Afridoctor to all capable Nokia handsets to ensure mass adoption.
Break down of Afridoctor features
SnapDiagnosis: Put your mind at ease - This feature allows you to get feedback from a panel of doctors on any ailments (moles, scars, burns, warts, etc) that you can take a photograph of. Expert feedback will be provided to you within 48 hours of your submission. The scalable panel of doctors is offered via reputable Health24 partnership.
Find a Doctor: Save Time - Utilizing local search via Google Maps you are able to search for any health service in your area, including doctors, hospitals, emergency clinics, etc. Simply type your criteria in the search field at the bottom of the map and click “search”. The map will then populate the results.
Distress: Feel Safe - Alert a family member or friend that you are in distress and inform them of your current location quickly and simply. Once you have submitted a recipients mobile number, they will be notified the instant you press the distress button. As Nokia’s home screen publishing API is further developed there would be an option to include an Afridoctor distress button as a useful home screen widget. This would enable the user to send a distress sms with one click, without having to load the Afridoctor application first.
screen shots of Afridoctor app
Other features include: Quizzes, Calculators, First Aid tips and a Symptom checker.
You can follow Afridoctor on Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/afridoctor
Or visit the official web presence - http://www.afridoctor.com
Visit 20fourlabs @ http://www20fourlabs.com
Congratulations to the other winners
Top ten winners and recipients of the Judge’s Choice Award:*amended Dec 8th 4:40
(12 months membership to Forum Nokia Launchpad):
1st - Afridoctor by 20fourlabs
2nd - That Roach Game by Breakdesign
3rd - Sasol e.Birds by Coolideas
4th - MrSNAKE by Simon Botes
5th - Thumbtribe widget by Thumbtribe
6th - LiveMobile by LiveMobile
7th - Countdown 2010 by Christian Reeve
8th - Surfing Safari by Aqua Online
9th - Turn Left at the Barrel by Turn Left at the Giraffe
10th - Mall-Buddy by Paul Hinrichsen
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December 8th, 2009 1:28 pm
Congrats on the win guys, great app.
Thanx also for adding some credit to the top5 winners on the evening.
A huge congrats also to the other 5 finalists.
6th – LiveMobile by LiveMobile
7th – Countdown 2010 by Christian Reeve
8th – Surfing Safari by Aqua Online
9th – Turn Left at the Barrel by Turn Left at the Giraffe
10th – Mall-Buddy by Paul Hinrichsen
December 8th, 2009 1:39 pm
Thanks Simon, and congrats to ALL winners, ta for adding the ones I left out (my bad)
Looking forward to seeing yours… bloody boomslang infestation in my garden so a little info would be good
December 8th, 2009 1:41 pm
Congratulations guys! Well done. great app.
December 8th, 2009 1:57 pm
Pictures of all the prize winners available here > http://www.flickr.com/photos/41118175@N05/sets/72157622954841140/
December 8th, 2009 2:46 pm
Huge congrats to all winners, especially Stef, Dave & Rick from Breakdesign, great job guys.
Would love to see that Roach game in the South African i-tunes store
December 8th, 2009 2:57 pm
@Gregg
Why would we wanna support i-tunes? They are not supporting local developers so for now lets stick to Nokia
hehe
Although lets see what Apple does to support local developers..
December 8th, 2009 4:01 pm
Congratulations to the 20fourlabs team and all the other top notch devs fom Africa for working their mojo.
December 8th, 2009 5:49 pm
[...] @20fourLabs 20fourLabs u00bb Nokia Africa Calling All Innovators - Winners!! http://bit.ly/5IVH3L Tags: fresh, [...]
December 8th, 2009 5:56 pm
Congrats to you guys and here are some sour grapes from Zimbabwe….
It is highly unlikely that no submission from outside South Africa deserved a price, especially looking at some of the quality and “innovation” in the SA-only top 10. We are convinced that most probably nobody looked at our submissions - worldclass tech-edge submissions- or the the rest of Africa was invited later-day for cosmetic purposes.
I think they should have kept calling the competition “Calling All Innovators South Africa”.
But honestly if we knew this thing was being directed from SA we would not have bothered.
December 8th, 2009 9:20 pm
Sam please contact us - maybe there is something we can work on together to get more exposure for guys who feel their apps had value and want to try to get them out there
email me at labsinfo@sa.24.com
December 8th, 2009 9:22 pm
@Sam Moyo
Although I am honoured to have won, I tend to agree with you.
I saw some really great apps from Kenyan developers at Nokia Development Days and was really sad to see non of them winning.
Maybe they never entered or failed on some other grounds?
It would be really great to see the full list of entries to know how many apps came from the rest of Africa.
Why not add a link to your app here so we can start playing with it and spreading the word about the app.
Sam my advice - after failing many times before - dont get to sour and dont ever give up
December 8th, 2009 9:33 pm
Simon - exactly - we all need to maybe work together to get the good apps out there and show the world what our awesome continent can do - Sam send us some info and we will see what we can do
December 9th, 2009 9:42 am
As a top 10 finalist myself, I have had a good look at the top 5 winners to see what I could learn from them, what my app lacked, what the judges rewarded, and where I could be improved.
It appears to me, that the apps that won at the end of the day had the most mass appeal (as well as being great apps). They could be used by the majority of people across Africa and SA as their subjects were generic (health, games, birds, snakes, news). Those apps that were a little more “niche” would struggle here.
So rather than whinge or argue about whose app was more polished, the judging criteria, an SA-bias, or insert-your-own-reason-here let’s learn from the experience. Let’s talk to the winners, share experiences and help promote each other as a true dev-community should.
Good business ideas don’t need the approval of a competition to be successful.
December 9th, 2009 9:53 am
Thanks Wendy I will be in touch.
@ simonB thanks for the snakey advice and here is hoping you can actually go near a real snake.
December 9th, 2009 7:41 pm
@sam - thanx for the message. I go near real snakes all the time. I live in Africa and there are many snakes near my house.
looking forward to seeing your app live soon.
December 9th, 2009 9:08 pm
@simonB… just for you http://ow.ly/KgKQ
December 10th, 2009 8:30 am
Very well said Neill!
December 13th, 2009 2:30 pm
Well done guys, and what a useful app! Looking forward to see what else comes out of 20fourLabs.
December 14th, 2009 5:19 pm
Congrats and well done for meeting the deadline, I tried but missed it by a few days so only got a concept submitted, (damn nokia PC suite communications API was more tricky than I thought). Anyway, I dont think my PC based app would qualify.
Well done, it looks like a great app. I have lots of doctors I have developed apps for so will spread the word.
jasper.