Meet the winners of our Raspberry Pi Competition 2024 on health and well-being
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Our Raspberry Pi Competition inspires students across the UK to find innovative solutions to the biggest questions facing society today.
As we look forward to our 2025 competition, we reflect here on the inspiring solutions that were created for this year’s 2024 Raspberry Pi Competition centred on personal health and well-being.
Teams were given a Raspberry Pi microcomputer and a challenge: invent products to improve health and well-being outside of traditional care settings.
What do you get when you combine a Raspberry Pi microcomputer and 1,000 ingenious students?
You get answers – lots of them.
Set against a backdrop of mounting health and social care pressures, healthcare is moving beyond hospitals and clinics. Technologies such as sensors, robotics, and digital therapeutics are delivering both immediate and long-term positive health outcomes, helping people to stay healthier at home. To support this new person-centric approach, our Raspberry Pi Competition 2024 challenged students to create a product to improve health and well-being wherever is best for them – at home, in the office, at school, or on the go.
Teams of students across four age categories put their ingenuity to the test, finding solutions to keep people healthier and happier through a combination of engineering, coding, design, and teamwork skills. The competition culminated in a final judging session held on 1 May in London. The day concluded with an inspiring awards ceremony and a huge congratulations to all participants, enthusing them to keep innovating to change the world.
Innovation and inspiration
The 16 finalist teams, along with their teachers and parents, were invited to present their ideas to a panel of 29 judges – including senior leaders at the Department of Health and Social Care, AstraZeneca, NHS England, Network Rail, National Highways, BUPA, Google Cloud, Lloyds Banking Group, Sellafield Ltd, the Home Office, and Moderna.
Students were also invited to take part in ‘speed networking’ with a further 40 client contacts, gaining advice and guidance to propel them forward in their chosen careers.
All of the 1,000 students who entered the competition showed boundless curiosity and creativity, building impactful solutions to boost health and wellness across communities. But it was the finalists below that went one step further to showcase products with the greatest potential. In each age category, two awards were up for grabs. The Innovation Award recognises technological excellence, while the Inspiration Award applauds endeavour, achievement, and strong teamwork.
Years 4 to 6: Plants and prevention
Taking home the Innovation Award in the youngest age category was Evergreen of Fulbourn Primary School. Grounded in scientific evidence that plants improve well-being, their Growth Regulation and Often Watering (G.R.O.W) box prompts people with memory loss to water their plants. A button lights up based on moisture levels, but remains off at night to support sound sleep – key to wellness. The Inspiration Award went to AirAware, an app developed by CASTEM Club to detect and flag unsafe gases in homes or offices, avoiding and alleviating health conditions such as asthma.
Runners-up Don’t Worry Be HapPi, from St Mary’s Church of England Primary School, developed an RFID key-fob to help children express emotions discreetly via emotion check-in stations around the school, with a physical dashboard offering teachers a real-time view. The Raspberry Teddies from King Edward’s School Bath created an emotional support teddy bear – ‘Artie Bear’ – with an in-built screen for personalised interactivity. You can watch the finalists’ entry videos here.
Years 7 to 9: Air quality and aerobics
In the Years 7 to 9 category, the Innovation Award went to WellTech of SB Coding Club – their AirSafe air vent uses a combination of sensors to measure Particulate Matter, humidity, and temperature, with a proprietary algorithm to determine the best vent angle for optimal air quality. Ultimate Pi-Tential from Kelvin Hall School took home the Inspiration Award, developing a device that reminds people to drink, stand up, relax, exercise, and eat. The attention to accessibility made the entry stand out, championing inclusivity to ensure those who struggle to communicate verbally can convey their feelings to others.
Runners-up Coding Squirrels from Longridge Towers School created a medication reminder alert system, while PulseTech from King Edward's School Bath came up with a hand-worn heartrate sensor fittingly called ‘the Gauntlet’. You can check out the finalists’ videos here.
Years 10 to 11: Reminders and respiration
LGGS Coding Club’s team We Were Groot bagged the Innovation Award for their reminder system developed to support people with conditions like dementia who live alone. Visual, text, and audio reminders are designed to empower people to stay independent, improving quality of life while reducing strain on stretched services. The Inspiration Award went to AIRWISE of Tynecastle High School for their indoor air quality monitoring device, which measures humidity, air pressure, air quality, and carbon levels.
Runners-up BaeMax from King Edward's School Bath built a chatroom for students to engage with climate scientists, researchers, and educators, while Tech Titans from KEGS Young Engineers Club harnessed the Internet of Things to power a home-based medical assistant that detects irregularities in heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure. Watch the finalists’ videos here.
Years 12 to 13: Smart stethoscopes and sensory soothers
Innovation Award winners Calday Robotics from Calday Grange Grammar School created a digital stethoscope to diagnose cardiac irregularities, helping to improve access to advanced medical devices. The stethoscope amplifies heartbeats using a 3D-printed stethoscope head, records them, and creates a live graph of patients’ heartbeat and rhythm. Inspiration Award winners SixthSense from UTC Oxfordshire delved into sensory profiling, understanding how environmental factors can cause and alleviate sensory overload.
Runners-up Lifeline from Richard Hale School developed an AI-powered health consultant linked to a medical database, while Blueberry Fields from The Liverpool Blue Coat School created a rewards-based game to encourage exercise. Check out their videos here.
Nurturing tomorrow’s innovators
PA’s Raspberry Pi Competition stands testament to human ingenuity, combining tech and creativity to solve gnarly challenges. This year’s competition continued this legacy – harnessing students’ unbridled enthusiasm to build highly relevant solutions for the shifting world of home healthcare. Fuelled by young peoples’ confidence and ability, the future is bright.
Thank you to our supporting partners Rentokil Initial, Anglia Ruskin University, Google Cloud and the Department of Health and Social Care.
Another inspiring event at the PA Raspberry Pi awards, this year with a health theme which is very close to my heart. It’s always a highlight to see the amazing ideas that children as young as primary school age can come up with and then work together to turn into reality. I need some of those inventions in my life right now.”
Every now and then you have a day at work that you can’t believe you get paid for. The PA Raspberry Pi Awards is one of those, a rare chance to see what is possible when you let imagination run wild, and to hear it from the mouths of tomorrow’s inventors. It is an inspiring, beautiful, wonderful experience to be part of, and the enthusiasm from the students will live with me for a long, long time.”
Three things struck me: first, how many entries had used lived experience in their solutions, be that their own or within the wider family. Second, both social and health care were represented and within that both physical and mental health were covered. Really impressed by their expansive thinking. Third, those of us who are slightly older need not worry. The sheer levels of ingenuity and enthusiasm made me feel we are in safe hands.”
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