Excel@FIT 2018: Apps for care services or holiday planning

The all-day conference Excel@FIT presented nearly fifty student informatics projects to the general public. The fourth consecutive year of this conference took place at the Faculty of Information Technology of BUT on Thursday 3 May 2018. IT students had the opportunity to introduce their practical solutions, for example, Marek Schauer introduced his information system for care services administration which significantly facilitates coordinating care of individuals. His colleague Marek Sychra had programmed a search engine for air transport helping to search for the ideal combination of flights.

"The Nina information system for care services administration enables coordinators easy planning of visits, care schedule, and management of reports and timetables. A caregiver in the field may see information on his/her patients directly in his/her phone or he/she can write a report on his/her visit of a client. The system also enables to track caregiver's location to find out whether he/she really visited the said patient," explained Marek Schauer who is currently enrolled in the bachelor's Information Technology programme at FIT BUT. He added that there already were apps for care services which are, however, intended for the American market.

Marek Schauer created the Nina system for care services administration | Photo: Salik Sláma

The caregiver can use the mobile interface to report what he/she did for the client, when he/she arrived and when he/she left him. "I'm thinking of adding a module which would register the patient's medical history, various medical documents and caregivers' documents, contracts and certificates, if any," suggests Marek who consulted the whole system with the care services in Bratislava - Karlova Ves.

The expert jury, comprising faculty representatives as well as industry partners, decided on the best Excel@FIT's projects. The visitors could vote for their favourites directly on the spot as well. Another interesting project presented at the conference was a system for route planning in air transport. "I worked with a database of 1.57 billion flights and data collected from 3,100 international airports which I gained through a co-operation with Kiwi.com. The result is a search engine for air transport which can find the ideal combination of flights from point A to point B located anywhere in the world using two algorithms," says Marek who is enrolled in a follow-up master's programme at FIT. His system can find the shortest and the fastest route with regard to many criteria.

Marek Sychra created a system for route planning in air transport | Photo: Salik Sláma

Matúš Dobrotka decided to analyse the acoustic environment from audio recording of speech. His solution can automatically recognise whether the speaker is on a bus, in a car, train or tram or whether the speaker is at home or in an office. "I worked with a total of 15 different acoustic environments where people usually spend their time. I combined two systems for classifying sounds and achieved a success rate of 69%. Even better results could be achieved by integrating neural networks, which I might do in the future," indicates the student of informatics.

Matúš Dobrotka analysed the acoustic environment from audio recording of speech | Photo: Salik Sláma

Excel@FIT gives young IT experts the opportunity to introduce their research, learn to present it publicly and explain its content to the general public. "We want to encourage our students not to hesitate to show what they are working on. They may also find inspiration in other students' projects. They can also meet industry representatives who can give them relevant feedback from their point of view," concludes Vítězslav Beran, the main organiser and Vice-dean for external relations.