Blacktown Hospital student in winning team

A Blacktown medical student is on top of the world after her team’s design took out first place at an international scientific conference.

Alice Leung, 20, was one of just 16 medical students selected to attend Elsevier Hacks in Finland where students teamed up with designers and had 48 hours to produce a prototype.

The Western Sydney University student admitted she did not get much sleep as her team worked around the clock on their winning design Patient X.

Their application would be a chat-bot similar to Apple’s Siri program, combining artificial intelligence with a textbook database to let medical students practice diagnosing a patient.

Ms Leung said it was a fantastic experience working with students from around the world and developing new skills.

“As students we got to do things out of our comfort zone,” she said.

“They even got us to try doing some hacking, doing some logo designing, which was really interesting because that’s not something we get to do every day as medical students.

“It definitely made me more interested in getting involved with similar projects in the future. I never saw myself getting involved in technology and app development, but now that I’ve done it I’d like to explore it more in the future.”

The team won €6000 for their efforts, and are hopeful the company might make their design a reality.

The trip, which was sponsored by Elsevier, was also Ms Leung’s first time in Europe, and she enjoyed the opportunity to explore Helsinki.

This story was originally published in the Blacktown Sun.