Film and TV Production Students in Student Enterprise Award Win

28 April 2020

This year’s Student Enterprise competition has been won by final year students on the Film and Television Production programme, Andy Power and Rachael Murray, with their Heartbeat Heroes App Project. They were the highest ranked of all the 24 entries to the competition from students at DkIT.

Each year DkIT run the Student Enterprise competition to act as a promotional drive for the main Enterprise Ireland competition. Each team submits a video of their business idea or project. These are then judged by a panel from the Regional Development Centre (RDC) and the winning team of Andy and Rachael will receive a €500 prize which is provided by Enterprise Ireland.

The Heartbeat Heroes App links First Aid responders to patients needing care, and will help reduce the burden on ambulance crews, and potentially save lives with a quicker response time. Heartbeat Heroes is a very simple idea that solves a problem faced around the globe and with a bit of work the team could make it a commercial reality.

Rachael talks about the idea behind the project:

“I am a member of the Order of Malta for twelve years, and I am a first aid responder and a cadet leader, so I have had a love for first aid for half my life. In rural areas ambulance response time can be over an hour wait. It has taken at least an hour for an ambulance to arrive at a life-threatening emergency more than 120 times this year."

Andy adds

“I was in charge of the technical aspects of the project like making the video, and setting up the graphics.”

Rachael talked about how the project has helped her

“It has given me the confidence to create and develop ideas. I was then able to develop the idea further with Andy and as he has a background in graphics, it was a great match for developing the idea. This competition win will be great to have to put on my CV, as it shows my creativity and dedication towards my work.”