The scale of Egypt’s economic potential is often described in terms of its highly educated and entrepreneurial youth. The truth of this sentiment was demonstrated clearly by the three winning teams of the recently concluded GE Egypt Digital Innovation Challenge. The competition was held under the patronage of the Ministry of Communications & IT (MCIT) in cooperation with the Technology Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center (TIEC), an affiliate of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA).

With exceptional solutions spanning the power, healthcare, and transportation sectors, the winners leveraged their innovation and engineering expertise in areas such as the Internet of Things (IoT), digital industrial technologies and broader software design to address three priority challenges impacting Egypt’s economic development.

The three winning teams not only receive EGP 100,000 they will also receive a four-week online training program to further develop their digital solutions using GE’s open-source industrial software platform, Predix. Predix is the world’s first cloud-based operating system for industry, and it helps connect industrial assets with powerful analytics to deliver insights that boost operations and efficiencies. Additionally, the three winners will be granted a free Predix license for one year.

“We are proud of the role that young minds can play towards the country’s digital transformation and see the importance of partnering with global companies to drive knowledge transfer and to enable youth with capabilities that help them excel,” said H.E. Eng. Yasser El Kady, Minister of Communications and Information Technology in Egypt.

The challenge received more than 185 submissions from young entrepreneurs, university students and software developers coming from 18 different governorates. The judging panel included nine judges from GE in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the US, from the GE Digital, GE Renewables, GE Energy Connections, GE Healthcare, and GE Transportation businesses, in addition to two judges from TIEC.

Here are the winning ideas for the GE Egypt Digital Innovation Challenge:

Energy:

• The challenge was to develop a digital solution that will help stabilize the electric grid, as various power sources including gas, wind, solar and coal, go online and offline.

• The solution is a software that detects the voltage and current of each of the three phases of the distribution network in the Egyptian grid and connects it to a control box that monitors and analyzes data. This enables the injection of single phase photovoltaic (PV) sources, and switching between the phases seamlessly per their current load, hence decreasing unbalance of the grid and improving its satiability and reliability.
• The winner is Ibrahim El Sayed Ibrahim, a 26-year-old Masters of Science and Engineering student who works as an electric engineer in the field of power generation. Ibrahim is leveraging his winning idea for the thesis for his Master’s degree; he is currently completing his thesis under the supervision of Dr. Naggar Hassan Saad and Dr. Walid El-Khattam from the Faculty of Engineering in Ain Sham University.

Healthcare:

• The challenge was to develop a digital solution to help track a hospital’s installed base of equipment, and improve process, operations and flow.
• The solution is an application that connects Bluetooth enabled sensors placed on equipment with Bluetooth enabled mobile devices to help monitor the condition and location of medical equipment. The system also supports Bluetooth fixed beacons to locate medical staff and personnel within a medical environment, hence improving the efficiency at any medical institution and better managing its assets.
• The winners are Hany Fathy Hamad and Talal Osama ElShabrawy, who are both Telecommunications Engineering professors at the German University in Cairo.

Transportation:

• The challenge was to develop a digital solution to remotely monitor the rail fleet, and record information about operations, maintenance cycles and scheduling.
• The solution is a control system, that leverages IoT technology, by collecting data from sensors placed on locomotives and trolleys, and then transmits it to a control center that will help drivers remotely analyze and monitor the fleet. This ultimately helps detect issues before they occur, and helps manage fleet scheduling, hence improving the efficiency of rail transportation which will help decrease carbon emissions, road traffic and accidents on the road.
• The winning team is Egyptian Smart Transport Cargo (ESTC), which includes Yasser Ashoosh, Amr Abdeen, Haytham Tag, and Mohamed Gaffer, who are students at the Faculty of Engineering, studying Mechatronics at the University of Banha, located in Banha, and Dr. Nader Mansour, Mechatronics Professor at the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Banha.

GE sponsors open innovation challenges to help address customer and country needs in an efficient and effective manner by sourcing and supporting innovative ideas, wherever the source.