A team of young Mexican engineers has been awarded a total of US$12,500 for developing a potentially life-saving app during the 2016 OECD Ministerial “The Digital Economy: Innovation, Growth and Social Prosperity” event in Cancun.

Nisi Vitae’s (pictured) winning application enables users to quickly and automatically provide all of their medical information to emergency response personnel when calling for an ambulance.

The prize was the result of a 24-hour Hackathon, organized by the business community and the government of Mexico, that attracted over 170 teams between the ages of 18 to 29.

The team won the grand prize of US$10,000, as well as an additional US$2,500 for coming first in their category.

Other category prize winners included Time Stamps in the Cultural Heritage category, an app designed to make studying history more immersive for teenagers; VR-ehab in the Social Inclusion category, for an app that converts physical rehabilitation into a game using an Android Virtual Reality environment and a hand movement detection system; and Autonomi in the Entrepreneurship category, an app aimed at increasing security and independence for the visually impaired.

“The event was a demonstration of industry and the technical community’s commitment to promote digital skills development, innovation and creativity in young app developers,” said BIAC Secretary General Bernhard Welschke.

The Hackathon was made possible through sponsorship by AT&T, Cisco, Disney, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Verisign, and the Internet Technical Advisory Committee to the OECD (ITAC).