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Working alongside education charity The Smallpeice Trust, more than fifty brilliant young minds took part in the Siemens Healthineers ‘Next Big Thing’ Challenge grand final at Siemens Healthineers headquarters in Camberley. The students came from ten local schools and in their teams, were tasked with creating a piece of wearable health technology that would assist the daily lives of patients with various conditions, from deafness to dementia.

The health assistance product was designed by students and programmed using their own Raspberry pi. The students were challenged with writing their own code to programme the tool for it to detect and respond to stimuli in order to operate and support the patient.

The confident young engineers were also challenged with marketing and presenting their product to a panel of expert judges in the form of the Siemens Healthineers team, who gave positive and inspiring feedback at the end of the day.

The students were accompanied on the day and supported by their proud teachers throughout the project. A lot of the project work took place at lunch times and after school.

Sarah McCarthy, teacher at Yateley School said:

“I’m really proud of my students. It’s been great to see the personal journey they’ve been on and how they have gone from quiet students to confident young engineers. They’ve worked as a team without knowing each other before and have built new friendships. It’s been a fantastic opportunity to do something different and outside of the classroom and it’s been a great insight into the world of STEM”

The winning team was Ranelagh School with their Teddy Pi project. A teddy bear with an inbuilt Raspberry Pi for parents to send messages to their deaf children when they were out of eyeshot. The judges awarded a trophy for first prize and were impressed not only with the design but the strong ideas refined through research.

Closely followed in second place was Tomlinscote School with their Ellie memory assist project. The students went the extra mile to deliver an additional 46 pages of code! Third place was given to Cove School with their Health Pi necklace. A sensitive and relevant project that focused on mental illness and overcoming challenges.

The day encouraged students to understand more about the world of engineering and industry. It developed their problem solving and design skills and gave them a sense of achievement and a greater confidence.

Some participating students said:

“The day has been a good insight into engineering and STEM”

“I feel like I’ve learned how to create real-world solutions to real-world problems”

“It’s been tough at times but great fun”

“I’ve made friends with people I have never met before”

“I’ve done a little bit of coding before; they even learn Scratch in primary schools now”

The Smallpeice Trust is all about inspiring young people who are daring enough to think big and imagine. They would like to thank Siemens Healthineers for the opportunity of working together in supporting young engineers.

Siemens Healthineers enables healthcare providers worldwide to increase value by empowering them on their journey towards expanding precision medicine, transforming care delivery, improving patient experience and digitalising healthcare. A leader in medical technology, Siemens Healthineers is constantly innovating its portfolio of products and services in its core areas of diagnostic and therapeutic imaging and in laboratory diagnostics and molecular medicine. Siemens Healthineers is also actively developing its digital health services and enterprise services. In fiscal 2018, which ended on September 30, 2018, Siemens Healthineers generated revenue of €13.4 billion and adjusted profit of €2.3 billion and has about 50,000 employees worldwide. Further information is available at www.siemens-healthineers.co.uk.