Commack Student Google World Competition Science Fair Finalist

Filed under: Commack School District,News |

By Brenda Lentsch

Matthew

Commack High School senior Matthew O’Connell is a Regional Finalist (North America) in the Google Science Fair, a global online science and technology competition open to individuals and teams from ages 13 to 18. Matthew is one of 90 Regional Finalists worldwide, and one of ten regional finalists from the US and Canada. “Standing out amongst thousands of entries, these projects are bursting with the potential to change the world,” according to Google’s announcement.

Matthew’s project, the “Development of a Computer-Based Multi-Sensory System to Better Relay Pharmacotherapy Information,” has won recognition in other contests as well, including Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair and at the FIP (International Pharmaceutical Federation) World Congress.

“I created a system to relay prescription information via visual representation, audio instruction, and translated text. The program has direct application for providing medication instruction to populations in distress as groups such as Doctors without Borders must. My program takes medication instructions and relays them through three mediums of communication: textual, visual, and audio. Whereas, current methods only satisfy one component: textual, and even though prescribers can write prescriptions, they cannot translate the information to the degree that my program can. The output files of my program relay information in three ways: a label, calendar, and storyboard. The first goes on a medication’s container and the latter two are provided as handouts for the patient to take back with them to his/her home.”

At this point, Matthew’s software program has been downloaded over 700 times in more than 80 countries. The medical professionals are helping by testing the program as well as adding new terms and languages for his databases.

Matthew is also nominated for a Google Science Fair Computer Science Award of $25,000 and a year of mentoring for a project that shows outstanding and innovative work in the field of computer science.

 On August 16, Google will be announcing 15 Global Finalists. Hoping Matthew is one of them!

Matthew’s project entry info: Click here. 

More competition info: https://www.googlesciencefair.com/en/competition

Photo by Richard Kurtz (taken at Intel ISEF competition in Los Angeles). 

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