Waikato-designed app to detect pneumonia wins Microsoft international award

For Chen's prototype app detecting bacterial and viral pneumonia, he has just won an international award. Image / Supplied

A Hamilton-designed prototype app to diagnose pneumonia has won Company-X senior software developer Jiadong Chen an international award.

Chen created the prototype app that uses artificial intelligence (AI) for Microsoft's international competition Most Valuable Professional Global Cloud Skills Challenge. He built an image classifier that can be used for lung chest radiographs to detect bacterial and viral pneumonia.

Microsoft MVP senior member Jeffrey Kitt says: "Jiadong chose this project to contribute to fighting the public health emergency and help medical professionals diagnose lung diseases using AI."

In a post chronicling his project, Chen says: "Medical staff around the world have shown bravery and resilience in the fight against Covid-19, and some even sacrificed their lives while performing their duties. As an ordinary person, as a programmer, I also want to help."

He says he is super excited about winning the award. "This award gives me more confidence. I am also very happy to share my knowledge with the community by writing an article on Azure, AI and sharing tutorial collections. This makes me feel happy and fulfilled."

Chen is also six-time winner of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, Developer Technologies award, making him one of 3000 Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award winners internationally.

Company-X senior software developer Jiadong Chen has just won Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional Global Cloud Skills Challenge. Photo / Stephen Barker, Barker Photography

He joined Company-X in 2020 from Unity, the creator of the world's most widely used 2D, 3D, augmented and virtual reality development platform, where he worked as a field engineer. In 2016, Chen also wrote a book on Unity 3D, selling 15,000 copies.

Company-X artificial intelligence specialist Lance Bauerfeind says: "This win shows Jiadong is exceptionally innovative with Microsoft Cognitive Services. This is great news for Company-X and our clients who want technology to solve their problems."

Hamilton software development company Company-X was founded in 2012 by software specialists David Hallett and Jeremy Hughes and has won contracts with New Zealand government departments and a US multinational.

Company-X's team has now grown to nearly 60 New Zealand-based software specialists and the company has already won seven awards since 2017, with the most recent one going to their software quality assurance tester Jes Elliott for Reseller News Women in ICT 2021 Rising Star Award.