Our PhD student, Vassileios Balntas, has been one of the seven 1st Prize Winners of the 8th Bright Ideas Competition organised by the WestFocus collaboration. This year in total 171 teams of PhD students and 244 students have participated in the competition. The participating universities are Brunel, Kingston, Royal Holloway, University of West London, Roehampton, St George's, Westminster, Surrey and Portsmouth. Vassileios' award winning work is a system recording sleep apnea remotely using a mobile phone. A brief introduction to his work is as follows:

Sleep apnea is a very serious condition that affects around 7% of the population, and can lead even to heart failure. With the proposed system the patient can record the sleep sounds he/she makes overnight using a mobile phone, After that, the sound recording will be uploaded  to a website. The web app can extract sleep statistics and detect apneas. The final diagnosis is sent to an expert for verification, and also to the patient.