On December 12, the DTU “Online Medicine Ecosystem” team outperformed 100 other nationwide projects to become 2021 Vietnam Social Innovation Challenge (VSIC) Champions.Contributions were received from 300 medical doctors working jointly with medical students. The leader of the DTU team was lecturer Dr. Huynh Le Thai Bao and the projectnow has 26,000 members nationwide, including expert scientists,doctors and students.
Honoring creative startup ideas
Winning the Championship was the merely the latest achievement of the DTU “Online Medicine Ecosystem”team. The contest is the first and biggest business startup student competition, held annually in Hanoi over the past ten years by Enactus FTU and the FTU Business Ideas Team in HCMC, under the patronage of the Faculty of Business Administration at the Foreign Trade University (FTU). This year’s topic was entitled: “Business buildssustainable communities” and 100 teams competed in:
- First round: mentor matching & training, learning about startupsand SBMC, MVP creation, a market research talk show, presentation day, financial and marketing planning
- The North & South Vietnam regional finals
- The national finals
The DTU Medical Volunteer team win the Championship
In the VSIC finals, the Medical Volunteer team, consisting of Tran Dac Dien, Tran Gia Tan and Tran Thi Phuong from DTU and Le Van Thanh, from the University of Danang, had six minutes to present the advantages, usefulness and need for their concept and then replied to questions on:
- Sources of income
- The average number of visitors
- Plans to increase visitors and personnel
- Ways of motivating volunteers
Then the DTU team and three others participatedin a simulated situation concerning the opportunities, challenges and adaptive solutions during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The team’s first prize was 85 million VND and a place in 2021 Startup Wheel finals. Other awards went to:
- First runners-up: the Blue Ocean team from the HCMC University of Education and Saigon University,with their project,“Creating an inclusive playground model for children with mental challenges”
- Second runners-up: the Sis and Bro team from the Hanoi University of Science & Technology and the Foreign Trade University, the Hanoi University of Science & Technology, and the Foreign Trade University, with a project entitled “The application of vocational education through self-development for 9 to14 year-old students”
- Most promising prize: the Medus team,from the Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine and the HCMC University of Science, with “A medical learning support platform”
Unique community medical project online
Dr. Thai Bao from DTU stated: “There are currently many ways of studying Medicine online worldwide, but they are all limited in scope. Ouridea of an online medicine ecosystem is based on the integration of education, medicine, technology and volunteer work, using apps, the web, Facebook, YouTube, Zoom and Meet.”
The Medical Volunteer team present
The system will benefit Vietnamese medical staff and students nationwide and consists of:
- A mobile phone app, which is the foundation of the system anddelivers1,200 online lessons, multiple-choice tests, webinars, CME syntheses and medical simulations
- The ykhoa.org website, which contains 3,600 medical articles
- The Dien Dan Y Khoa group, with 26,000 members, the Kenh Y Khoa page, with 24,000, and other Facebook-based amenities
- Webinars offering online seminars on medicine, where doctors share their expertise with thousands of students at one time, using Zoom, with seven productions so far and 20,000 views
- The Kenh Y khoa channel on YouTube, with 3,600 followers, where videos are submitted by the group members themselves, their partners or by the community
The app and the website have been searched 6.6 million times on Google and accessed 2.5 million times, with 1,800 regular users. The webinars have been viewed 20,000 times in all.
The YouTube channel includes 200 videos viewed 104,000 times over 11,100 hours and 3,600 subscriptions. The Dien dan Y khoa group has 18 official authors and 23,000 members, with a total of 1.5 million Facebookhits.
“This contest has enabled me to meet several experts and investors in the medical field, who suggested ways of improving our project even further,” explained Dr. Bao. “We wereultimatelyselected to compete in the 2021 VSIC Startup Wheel and the HUSTA VIFOTECH contests and I want to thank the DTU Board, the lecturers and our College of Medicine & Pharmacy colleagues from the Faculty of Medicine, who made this all possible, for the enthusiastic support, help and advice in completing this project with the best outcome.”
Dr. Bao was awarded a VinIF scholarship. The Vingroup Innovation Foundation (VinIF) financially supportsthe best current or future PhD researchers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, medicine, pharmacy, economics and education.
(Media Center)