CoreConnect

Inspiration

Last summer, our team of 4 attended and volunteered at the People With Smiles Camp to assist disabled people in their daily lives. Throughout the 5 day camp in San Antonio, we saw the drastic effects of the Prader Willi Syndrome disease and how it hindered peoples’ communication. Realizing that this is a serious impending problem for many people, we did thorough research into the problem and looked into other speech conditions such as Broca’s Aphasia as well. With 300+ hours in app development, two beta-tested prototype apps, speech-translation research, traction from winning coding hackathons and pitch competitions such as Young Coder’s Sphere: Code For Cities and PitchLabs: PitchFest earlier this year, we can empower patients, reduce stress, and deliver impactful outcomes. Building CoreConnect advances our goal of voices being heard and recognized universally by providing tools for patients to advance their speech in conversations, education, and professional environments.

What it does

CoreConnect captures slurred or fragmented speech and uses AI to instantly output clear, synthesized audio of the patient’s intended message, all through machine learning models. The AI assistant tailors profiles as patients progress, delivering quantifiable improvement for daily life, ensuring sustainable social success across the world all at the small cost of the miniscule time and effort in purchasing the affordable app, which we hope to make available on all platforms.

How we built it

We built it across a 6 month timeline integrating React Native for the frontend and Python for the backend.

Challenges we ran into

We decided to pitch our solution across the internet to many big business pitch competitions for high schoolers to gain traction and funding for our solution. Endlessly creating pitch-decks, analyzing our finances, building a mock startup, and pitching our presentations, we didn’t think we would win anything. “Is this even worth it,” I contemplated while lazily glued to my bed. Understanding the gloomy look on my face, my friend, taking his fingers off the silky smooth silver MacBook keyboard, replied, “It helped me, and it can help someone else, so we need to get this out there.” Inspired by his words, we kept working diligently, finding more pitch competitions to submit to. We submitted to 3 pitch competitions, and after receiving the devastating news of not winning the hearts of the first competitions’ judges, we were hopeless. At that point, we lost all motivation. “Hey, at least we tried,” I said. “But trying isn’t enough,” he replied. In my head, I knew he was right, and we just stared at the ceiling with puzzled, elongated looks on our faces. Did we give up? Looking back at how inspired I was from the smile CoreConnect lit up on my friend’s face, I knew we had to win something; I traded countless hours of sleep for staring at lines of code and perfecting datasets, and I compromised on more “fun” than I can even count with my fingers, so success wasn’t just an option anymore, it was mandatory.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We won 3rd Place! We couldn’t believe it, and smiles invaded our faces. We won 3rd place for the PitchLabs: Pitchfest Competition out of hundreds of other applicants, and with the competition’s positive feedback, we were delighted to be rewarded with a certificate and prize money. Yes, the app only had 1 real user (my friend), and sure, we might’ve not had a “real” impact just yet. However, currently, we know that when we test out CoreConnect in July of this summer at the same People with Smiles Camp I attended last summer, it’s going to establish an everlasting beneficial impact on those people with outcomes that will provide us with solidified traction. With that traction, we can reach an even wider audience of people, expanding our reach, solidifying our solution, and brightening the world one word at a time.

What we learned

We learned that teamwork can foster real-world social impact, even if it starts from just a group of 4 high schoolers.

What's next for CoreConnect

We're seeking mentorship and initial funding from INNOSpark — whose passion for entrepreneurship aligns perfectly with CoreConnect's mission. We want to make this concept, this idea in its early stages, into a tangible reality.