Prince William County Public Schools

The challenges of the pandemic inspired innovation from Tony Bright, Arman Lateef, and Gabriel Ralston, all sophomores at Charles J. Colgan Sr. High School. Last spring, just like their peers all around the world, they found themselves suddenly at home and isolated from their regular routines.

"We had seen in the news about hospitals being overfilled with patients due to a variety of reasons, so we thought that it would be neat to build an app that can help doctors diagnose and treat patients," said Bright.

Working closely with Dr. Jessica Carpenter, a neurocritical care specialist at the Children's National Health System, the students designed the Pediatric Neurocritical Care app to allow physicians to access the latest standard-of-care treatments and interventions for children and adolescents in Intensive Care Unit settings.

"Many facilities around the country do not have doctors like Dr. Carpenter to provide this type of super-specialized care," said Lateef. "Working with her to create this app and making this knowledge accessible to healthcare professionals across the country and the world seemed like a great idea."

The Colgan High School students said that the app represents what is possible when combining real-world needs with their academic areas of interest.

"Working with computers has always been a hobby of mine, especially programming, which I have been doing since the fifth grade," shared Ralston, also stating, "This work aligns with my future interests because I aspire to be a computer scientist, or a computer engineer someday."

Lateef added, "I am extremely interested in the intersection of health and technology, so I was excited to try my hand at this project."

The Pediatric Neurocritical Care application is now available in the App Store and Google Play.