Question: Team Members Full Names:
Answer: Maxim Bovykin, Denis Gnatyuk, Alexey Klishin, Sergey Fedorov

Question: Mentor:
Answer: Sergey Sidorov

Question: Title of Project:
Answer: ViVa: Epidemic Protection System

Question: Project Overview:
Answer: We are all facing the problem of faster and faster epidemic spreading despite all the efforts specialists take. Our system offers a fresh view at the problem of infectious diseases. The synergetic combination of a high technology and an innovative scientific approach makes it possible to obtain better than ever before results. Our breakthrough system makes data analysis, interpretation and presentation accessible to everyone. The solution that we offer is an epidemic protection system called ViVa. It consists of 3 components: ViVa Medicine, ViVa Epidemiology and ViVa Alert. Each of the components is aimed at solving the specific range of problems. The first of the components, ViVa Medicine, solves the problem of disease detection at early stages and helps to reduce recovery time, simplifies treatment process and minimizes the complication probability. The second component, ViVa Epidemiology, is designed to detect the pesthole quickly, which in its turn makes it possible to take measures for the pesthole neutralization and scale down an epidemic in a timely manner. ViVa Epidemiology can also be used for forecasting and modeling the epidemiological situation. The last but not the least component is ViVa Alert, which is exactly the part of our system that can be used by everybody. To do that one would only need the internet access either on a PC or a mobile device. ViVa Alert system notifies about the current epidemiological situation in the chosen region. Our system ViVa will help to consolidate the joint effort in the struggle against infectious diseases and, as a result, to save people’s lives!

Question: Technology/Software Used:
Answer: 1. Visual Studio 2008 Professional; 2. Silverlight 2.0; 3. .NET Framework 3.5 SP1; 4. Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework 3.5; 5. ASP.NET 3.5; 6. Windows Live SDK; 7. SQL Server 2008 SP1.

Question: Inspiration: What inspired your team to enter the Microsoft Imagine Cup and why did you choose the Software Design competition?
Answer: The members of our team are full of strength and energy. And sometimes we get captivated by some bright ideas that we are eager to realize. We work round the clock to do that. This is exactly what happened this autumn when we started working at our new project. It turned out to be that it fitted the theme of the Imagine Cup this year. On the other hand, the Imagine cup offers a great chance to bring our ideas to life. So we didn't have any doubts about participation. Our major at University is software design so we chose the section which we are experts at.

Question: Team History: How did your team meet?
Answer: All members of our team first met at school. Even then we found common interests, took part in programming competitions but didn't have any serious projects. But further on we entered the same University and became interns at the University IT Laboratory. Since that time we have always been thinking about the ideas and projects we can work on together.

Question: Team Experience: What experience did your team have with Software Design before competing in the Imagine Cup?
Answer: While mastering the newest technologies we faced a lot of challenges. We had a great experience of working in a team, solving difficult problems together, finding compromises in disputable situations. Before we started working as a team we had taken part in different IT Laboratory projects that dealt with developing software applications. Then last year, as a team already, we participated in the Russian semi-final of the Imagine Cup and got the second prize. This year we were more hardworking and got lucky.

Question: Highlights: What has been the best part of the Imagine Cup competition to date?
Answer: We got to know how to built a complete solution and how to implement it. And this is one of our main achievements. Working with experts in epidemiology and medicine gave us the understanding of the current situation in medicine and epidemiology. We learnt a lot about their daily needs and problems. And we are getting the feeling that we can really do something important that can make this world a better place.

Question: Inspiration: How did your team come up with your submission? Include which Millennium Development Goal inspired your solution.
Answer: We think infectious diseases worry almost everyone. The messages about atypical pneumonia, malaria, recently swine flu and many other infections have been terrifying us year after year. We thought how we can use our abilities and knowledge to solve this problem and it appeared to be that IT can do a lot! Besides, one of us comes from a doctor’s family and helped us to get deep insight into the problem.

Question: Challenges: What personal or technological challenges did your team face while developing your submission?
Answer: We’ve been aiming at using the latest technologies that we didn’t always have a chance to study at the university. That’s why we had to put a lot of effort into studying them by ourselves but we managed it in the end. Another challenge for us was using high-level and low-level programming at a time.

Question: Future Plans: What does your team plan on doing after the Worldwide Finals in Cairo, Egypt? Do you plan to use your project to launch a new business?
Answer: We are actively working at our business plan development trying to take into account various aspects of our project. We already have the agreement with the local Center of Disease Control to deploy our system in Nizhniy Novgorod region. We hope to continue working at implementing our system after the Imagine Cup taking the benefits that the victory can bring us.

Question: Links to more information (i.e. website, blog):
Answer: http://nnviva.spaces.live.com