Artificial Intelligence has taken the world by storm and has gradually progressed to the point where it is currently involved in and is an integral part of many sectors and applications. Whether it is a social media recommendation system, a quick route-finder in a ride-hailing application, or something as significant as diagnosing cancer and COVID-19, AI-based software solutions have immersed themselves in every aspect of our lives, and there is no denying that they are the future of technology at our current time.
In recognition of this massive technological transformation, a partnership between Code Lab & UNDP Accelerator Labs Iraq has been formed to help integrate Artificial Intelligence into the new startups and projects of young people in Iraq, who are aspiring to advance their country and push it forward using their ideas, projects, and startups. The result of that partnership was Innovation Mission.
Innovation Mission is a project centered around supporting post-pandemic relief initiatives by helping projects and idea-owners implement and grow their business through the enhancing and revolutionary power of AI that is to be integrated into their business. The mission essentially implements a competition between its participants by first collecting applications from individuals from technical and non-technical backgrounds who either have ideas for a business or already have startups implementing a particular business aimed at post-pandemic relief. A filtration process comes after that, where implementable ideas/businesses that can feasibly integrate AI into their infrastructure are selected for the second phase of this procedure. The selected applicants are then taken to Erbil for an initial training period that provides technical and non-technical training to support the projects and give them the support they need to grow their business for upcoming phases. Further filtration is applied to the projects to select the strongest ones to move into the incubation period. The incubation period involves more intensive training, and workshops that empower the participants to expand and practically implement their projects and helps them efficiently include AI in their business. The competition phase then comes, where nine projects showcase their progress and advancements so far, and three projects are selected as winners who will be receiving a sum of money as rewards. The sum of money is later used to help these projects further advance and flourish in the market.
After 4 months of training and incubation, 7 fully-formed projects emerged on Innovation Mission's stage highlighting the work they have been doing and how AI have helped them significantly improve their products and services.
Let's meet the Innovation Mission class of 2022:
Health360 🥇
Given the promising AI applications in the health sector, the Health360 project is trying to implement AI in its project about creating a fully specialized platform for doctors to store their patient's data in their personal accounts in order to improve health care in Iraq and reduce human errors by toning down the paperwork.
During our contest, Hussein used the AI and trained it on Latin and English medical terms so it can convert speech to text and predict the upcoming word; therefore, it will shorten much time for the doctors to write notes and reports. Furthermore, it will warn the doctor when the chosen medicine can have side effects on the patient based on his data.
This project is implemented by Hussein Fadhel.
Wasla 🥈
With transportation issues like traffic jams and obstructed roads being a serious impediment to fluent and smooth commuting in the country, Wasla decided to harness the potential of AI with its project that focuses mainly on solving the transportation problems of college students like the difficulties of finding an appropriate car, lack of commitment, unfixed prices, and many other problems they face daily during their college life.
During our contest Innovation Mission, the Wasla team managed to improve their project by using artificial intelligence to determine the time taken for each path the captain can take and select the shortest and most convenient one.
This project is implemented by Omar Sinan, Hasanain Abdulridha, and Mustafa Mohammed.
Laoob 🥉
Taking AI’s revolutionary potential to the field of athletic performance, the Laoob project is an application that provides a platform for amateur football players in Iraq by creating a profile for each one that contains pictures and videos of the player’s skills and uses artificial intelligence to suggest these players to clubs and coaches based on the international governing body of association football standards in addition to providing all football and clubs news and fields reservations.
This project is implemented by Akram Idan, Mohammed Maher, and Hasan Ammar.
Jobber
Unemployment is one of the most pressing problems that young people in Iraq face, and enhancing the job-hunting process with AI might just be the next game changer in Iraq to revolutionize the job search process in the region. The Jobber project is doing exactly that by creating job opportunities through connecting all the unemployed people with the companies who are searching for employees and helping them to create a CV with a Telegram app in a simple and fast way and then suggest these CVs to the companies in a matchmaking process that utilizes AI-powered recommendation engines.
This project is implemented by Jawhar Firas, Bilal Ibrahim, and Mustafa Bashar.
Diabetes Care
Nothing could help patients with chronic, long-term health conditions better than the intervention of a powerful technological tool like AI, and this is exactly what the project Diabetes Care aims to do by help diabetes patients through many problems they face during their daily life by collecting their data and creating a direct connection between them and the doctors to save more time and effort in addition to using artificial intelligence to determine Insulin doses, food, sleep quality and many other difficulties diabetes patients face.
This project is implemented by Karrar Falih, Zubaidah Bilal, Saja Zghair and Albatol Zaid.
Haqlna
As a result of price increases for the cattle feed and its low quality that affects the animal products we are getting a need for the project, Haqlna has appeared which provides cabins for growing cattle feed much faster and healthier in a way that granted the farmers to get 7KG of cattle to feed in 7 days with only 1kg of seeds.
Artificial intelligence played its role in this project by creating the appropriate environment to get cattle to feed with very high quality and efficiency.
This project is implemented by Mohammed Jamal and Raghad Ahmed.
Rihanna
aims to create vertical farming to produce vegetables and strawberries with water usage 70% less than traditional ways and without any chemical products which gives us high quality and special taste fruits and vegetables in addition to using artificial intelligence in detecting any disease and treating it directly to package it and supply it to the customer.
This project is implemented by Husam Falih, Mustafa Nafea, and Mohammed Khalid.
What's Next?
With respect to The Innovation Mission, our winners will be receiving financial and technical support to upscale their projects and help develop them more to reach the limits of their potential, as well as have these projects set an example of how AI can significantly revolutionize various applications.
As for the future beyond The Innovation Mission, then we have the vision of having been made the first step in the milestone of integrating AI in more and more applications and projects made by our youth and local companies and raising interest in building AI-centered applications in order to make AI part of the software solutions available in the local digital economy to keep track eith global technolog