NUI Maynooth students Cosmin Siclovan, Donal O’Sullivan and Marie Farrell in Sydney earlier this week.

A team of Irish science students made it into the final 20 of a global student technology competition run by Microsoft and held in Sydney earlier this week.

Donal O’Sullivan, Cosmin Siclovan and Marie Farrell, along with their mentor David Kerr, from the computer science department at NUI Maynooth,were in Sydney to compete against 72 teams in the global finals of the Imagine Cup at the Sydney Convention Centre.

Ukraine’s team QuadSquad clinched the Imagine Cup’s top prize and won the $25,000 for their design, sensory gloves that can translate sign language into speech.

“We would have like to have gone a little further but it is really difficult to get into the top 20, so we’re happy with the result,” Ms Farrell told the Irish Echo.

The Maynooth team were crowned Irish champions in April this year with their cloud-based application, docTek.

The application focuses on a doctor-patient synchronization system, which features a personalized symptomatic journal and reminders for the patient, along with client management features for doctors.

Ms Farrell was diagnosed with MS last year, which inspired the creation of the application.

“That was the motivation. I was told I would have to track everything in a diary but who is going to bother writing everything down in a diary?” she said.

Participants in this year’s competition were encouraged to create a technology solution that addresses the theme: Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.

The Maynooth team hopes that the application will make it easier for doctors to monitor patient conditions and symptoms.

“The application keeps track of everything and the information is uploaded onto the cloud. When you go to the doctor, all your information from the year is saved.

It takes them 15 minutes to look through it, instead of trying to read through a diary,” Ms Farrell explained.

The team says they have received a lot of feedback and interest in their design, and say they will continue to develop it.

“We have ten testers using the application at the moment and so far, the feedback has been positive. We have a few things to fix, but we hope to release it this September,” she said.