Code for Emergency 1st Place

PupilPulse | USA

Every six seconds, someone dies from diabetes, yet over 252 million people worldwide are currently living with the condition completely undiagnosed. Left undetected, undiagnosed diabetes frequently leads to severe nerve damage, autonomic neuropathy, and life-threatening medical emergencies. PupilPulse addresses this critical screening gap through an affordable, non-invasive medical device aligned with UN SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities).

Traditional diabetic screenings require invasive blood work and expensive clinical visits. PupilPulse transforms this process by combining low-cost hardware—a specialized camera module and automated light stimulus—with custom OpenCV computer vision algorithms. When light triggers the eye, the software maps the pupil boundary frame-by-frame to calculate real-time constriction velocity and latency. Sluggish pupil reactions, an early biological marker of diabetic nerve damage, are flagged using models trained on open-source and peer-reviewed datasets from reputable sources like IEEE. By making early detection rapid, accessible, and non-invasive, PupilPulse empowers communities, protects vulnerable populations, and delivers equitable healthcare before emergencies strike.