Question: Team Members Full Names:
Answer: Dubrovskyi Oleksandr Andrei Gordiyenko Dmytro Vlasenko Eugene Kovalov

Question: Mentor:
Answer: Vladimir Leshchinsky

Question: Title of Project:
Answer: iMommy

Question: Project Overview:
Answer: Ukraine ranks 204th out of 224 countries in CIA World Factbook birth rate ranking but only 18th in death rate ranking, preceded only by Russia and 16 poor African countries. Ukraine has the highest infant mortality rate in Europe while having the lowest total fertility rate. Currently around 70% of pregnancies registered in Ukraine are classified as high-risk pregnancies, and this number tends to grow. The monitoring is recommended for every pregnant woman over the course of pregnancy and is essential in the late terms of high-risk pregnancies. At the same time 1 out of 8 maternal hospitals in our hometown Kharkiv do not have sufficient amount of 24/7 health monitoring equipment due to high prices on such equipment and low budgets. Lots of medical facilities in developing countries around the world share this problem. According to unofficial statistics, 2 abortions are made per 1 birth in Ukraine at the moment. This number does not include widespread medicamental abortions made in the first 14 days of pregnancy. Over the first 17 years of its independence Ukraine has the most number of abortions per 1000 inhabitants among the whole world. The major causes of current demographic situation in Ukraine include lack of education on childbirth issues, lack of awareness on contraception and abortion issues, and insufficient budgets of maternity hospitals. iMommy project aims to ease current maternal health decrease and demographic crisis with the following goals: 1) Make basic health monitoring equipment affordable to maternity hospitals and individual women. 2) Inform and educate mothers-to-be on issues of prenatal care, labor, birth, baby care, contraception and others related to childbirth. Give recommendations on lifestyle, encourage turning to doctors for regular observations, provide consulting on medical issues and unite pregnant women and mothers in a social network. 3) Provide psychological comfort and support for pregnant women. Make women alert of their children’s prenatal life and consequences of abortions. Though the project was made with Ukrainian problems in mind, it might as well be useful in lots of countries facing similar challenges.

Question: Technology/Software Used:
Answer: .NET Framework 3.5 (ASP.NET WebForms, LINQ, ASP.NET AJAX, WCF), .NET Compact Framework 3.5 (WinForms), Silverlight 2.0, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server Compact 2005, Microsoft Sync Framework, Windows Live Services

Question: Inspiration: What inspired your team to enter the Microsoft Imagine Cup and why did you choose the Software Design competition?
Answer: We have participated in Imagine Cup before, and once we discovered that one of Millenium Goals (and at the same time a theme for Imagine Cup) is Maternal Health we could not resist entering the competition once again, since fertility rate and maternal care are huge problems in Ukraine - it is enough to mention that natural population decrease rate in Ukraine is the highest in the whole world. Software Design is something we are competent at and besides it fits better an idea of a global system.

Question: Team History: How did your team meet?
Answer: We met at Kharkiv National Radiotechnical University which is a largest academic IT hub of our city where thousands of students work on hundreds of projects and spirit of enthusiasm and innovation is everywhere. I cannot put it better as to say that we loved each other from the first sight: 5 minutes past we first met to discuss possibility of cooperating on a project we already drilled into details of features and technical implementation.

Question: Team Experience: What experience did your team have with Software Design before competing in the Imagine Cup?
Answer: We have won Imagine Cup Ukrainian Final, Software Design category in 2008 with a mobile-based multi-purpose reporting system. Most of us have some experience in real-life projects: Alexender and Eugene worked part-time as .NET developers at a large enterprise and Andrei is a project manager at an IT outsourcing company.

Question: Highlights: What has been the best part of the Imagine Cup competition to date?
Answer: The most surprising and pleasant part of the project so far was the tremendous amount of support we get from almost everywhere. An idea of caring about mothers and pregnant women seems to be important to everyone: from dozens of doctors we interviewed and hardware vendors we cooperate with to fellow students and even our competitors in Ukrainian finals who contributed several great ideas to the project.

Question: Inspiration: How did your team come up with your submission? Include which Millennium Development Goal inspired your solution.
Answer: The idea of caring about maternal health (5th UN MDG) came to us quite naturally: our mentor has became a father of a wonderful baby boy recently before the project has started, Alexender has a few OBGYN doctors in his family and the rest of us give thoughts about becoming parents in more or less near future. After talking to a head of a maternal hospital in Kharkiv we first decided to develop a health monitoring device but the idea grew larger and later we decided to submit it to Imagine Cup.

Question: Challenges: What personal or technological challenges did your team face while developing your submission?
Answer: The biggest challenge was to build a universal system for pregnant women all over the world. There are different rules, regulations and practicies of this field in each and every country and it is really tough to come up with common solutions. Besides that, we faced usual amount of technical troubles like customizing WCF services in CF.NET and Silverlight Beta issues, but we always managed to find a workaround.

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: iMommy Project is a startup and we are working on its codebase for about half a year, with Imagine Cup being a great opportunity to showcase our idea to the public but not the final goal. We are planning to work on the project by ourselves for a few more motnths and then seek for investment to bring the product to production level. We are working in cooperation with MaxLab, a leading wide-range hardware development company in Kharkiv, Ukraine. They are developing medical monitoring devices that are going to be a part of iMommy system but could be sold separately as well.

Question: Links to more information (i.e. website, blog):
Answer: http://www.imommyproject.com/