Engineers at the North-West University scooped an international award for their innovative initiative to combat Covid-19.
The Engineers were honoured with an award from the Covid-19 Innovation challenge of the United Nations (UN) Africa Innovation and Investment Forum 2020.
Researchers, firms, public and private development agencies, government leaders, innovators, youth and development partners were invited to showcase their innovations at the first Africa Innovation and Investment Forum 2020.
This was an initiative of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and its partners.
The Engineers award was for their Covid-19 screening solution which involves the digitalisation of the screening and data-capturing process.
About the innovation
” Tjop Tjop is a mobile app-based system that conveniently collects and stores the health vitals of students, learners, staff and customers without the paper work. It saves considerable time and effort at screening points, stores data safely off site and relays or reports selected data packets to designated addressees. It requires basic electronic thermometers and smartphones that are commonly available. It currently operates on Android phones, but the Apple-app version is already under development.”
“An Excel-format list can be created for participating schools, containing every authorised person’s identification number, name and designation (grade and class, teacher, parent or department) and an emergency contact number. This information is encoded by the NWU’s engineering team as a QR code and printed on an ID card, which can be provided to every learner.”
Prof Leenta Grober expressed excitement on having received the award for their “Tjop Tjop” initiative, ” It is a great honour to receive this recognition from such a prestigious organisation. I hope that Tjop Tjop will help us all get back to school and back to business and move towards a post-covid-19 world.”
