Young Catholic invents Hidra, an innovative search engine dedicated to medicine

There has been a competition called “Start Cup” for several years now. A real “challenge” between innovative projects that is aimed at teams with business ideas linked to the world of research, but also to projects developed by university students. At the regional level, after a first phase open to 30 projects, training and coaching will be provided for the best 12 ideas, to draw up the business plan, and therefore access to the final, scheduled for October. The Start Cup therefore makes cash grants available to the winning projects for sponsorships received from the supporters of the initiative aimed at setting up and starting the business.

The Hidra project (Human Interaction in Disease Records and Atlases) developed by a team “led” by the Catholic Nico Curti is also in the running for the final victory. Precisely for this reason, in recent days, Curti was invited and received at Palazzo Mancini to present and illustrate the idea. He was met by the Councilor for Youth Policies Federico Vaccarini.

“The idea was born for my PhD thesis project, a little by chance and a little by necessity, which is certainly a good omen. If we want any information – explained Curti simply – the first thing we do is search for it on Google, a generic search engine. If, however, we want more targeted information than restaurants, travel, airplanes or hotels, we have more specific search systems available, such as Trivago, Booking or Skyscanner. Hidra works in the same way, but for the medical sector, full of data and sources from which to draw. The enormous amount of data, however, is both a resource and a problem: a lot of information increases the chances of finding reliable answers, but at the same time slows down and confuses the search for these answers. A lot of confused and disorganized information is, then, the daily bread for the proliferation of fake news. Hidra aims to provide the user with a simple, quick and organized way to carry out their research efficiently, excluding false information and facilitating the understanding of the answers “.

“For me – said Councilor Vaccarini – it was a pleasure to meet Nico Curti and see how much passion, study and commitment there is behind this project. Surely today the health issue, together with the environmental one, is among the topics most attention to the public opinion. The proliferation of an infinite amount of information and data does not help to extricate oneself and that is why I believe this project to be winning and with multiple benefits. This idea of ​​drawing on more “sources” to arrive at filtered and safe results could easily be applied in other sectors as well. I congratulate Curti and the whole team and I hope to meet him again in October, after the final, this flies with the aim of competing for the victory also at national level ”. The innovative projects that pass the selection of the regional Start Cups, in fact, compete to win the “National Award for Innovation”. Who knows that Hidra might not be among these.