| Hakim Hayat |
REPRESENTATIVES from Brunei Darussalam received five Merit Awards in three different categories at the Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) held in Guangzhou, China from October 8 – 13.
Mindplus Education Sdn Bhd with their product Mindtrex won a Merit Award in the ‘Inclusions & Community Services – Education’ category. Mindtrex is a digital learning platform that offers personalised learning, intelligent tutoring, open response assignments and pedagogically rich analytics with the help of Artificial Intelligence. Mindplus Education’s latest project won both ICT Industry and Royal Patron Awards at the recent Brunei ICT Awards (BICTA).
Meanwhile, Nurshiela binti Ziziumiza, an undergraduate from Universiti Teknologi Brunei (UTB) undertaking Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Digital Media, received a Merit Award in the Tertiary Students Project Category for her MechSim project.
MechSim, is a simulation that is used for basic learning and training for students and workers with the use of Virtual Reality Sensors and Leap Motion. Made for engineering students and workers in mind, some of the features of this invention are a 360-degree panoramic view from the user’s perspective and an interactive detection in a fully interactive simulation environment.
Brunei Darussalam recorded its most promising performance in the Junior Schools Projects category, with all three winners in the BICTA Secondary Schools category achieving Merit Awards.
St John’s School’s ‘Hope Mental Health’ app hopes to help individuals suffering from depression, anxiety, panic disorders and other mental health illnesses. The team shared that their vision for their app is to promote health mental and to become a leading one-stop app for improved mental wellbeing.
Chung Hua Middle School’s project Instant Health Aid (IHA) also won recognition at APICTA.
IHA is a mobile health app that aids users with health issues and contains three modules – Blood Bank, Healthy Diet and Disease Prediction. Chung Ching Middle School Seria received a Merit Award for their BruLife app. The app acts a centralised hub of information for tourists visiting Brunei Darussalam, containing all the essential information that visitors to the country would need to know.
Brunei Darussalam sent eight teams to APICTA comprising winners and runners-up from BICTA 2018. A total of 266 teams from 15 member economies and 343 entry nominations competed in the international ICT competition.
The ratio of nominees and win awards is 63 per cent. Brunei Darussalam is ranked third in the overall APICTA members countries’ performance.
Brunei’s participation in the APICTA Awards is a continuous initiative by the Ministry of Communications to stimulate innovation and creativity in ICT, as well as to develop the nation’s ICT sector by encouraging individuals, students and businesses to compete at the international level. Since 2008, Brunei has achieved two winner’s awards, 24 merit awards and four special mentions in APICTA.