MyoCheck: Visual Acuity Exam Wins Rep. Carter’s (TX-31) 2019 Congressional App Challenge

Rep. John Carter has named a Round Rock student as the winner of the Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s 31st district. Soham Govande submitted MyoCheck: Visual Acuity Exam, an app designed to improve the accessibility of diagnostic healthcare so that users can detect early onset visual impairments. 

When asked why they were passionate about creating an app that focuses on diagnosing visual impairments the student replied, “I began to realize, giving people an accessible pathway to a free and accurate preliminary diagnosis of visual impairment might mitigate this problem. I decided to use my programming knowledge to create an app to perform visual acuity exams and inform users about myopia.” The student hopes to encourage other students to better their communities by using their computer science skills.  

Over 10,000 students registered for the 2019 Congressional App Challenge. These students created and submitted 2,177 functioning apps, marking the end of the most successful Congressional App Challenge to date. All told, 304 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 48 states, Puerto Rico, the Mariana Islands, and Washington, D.C.

The CAC is an initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. The non-profit Internet Education Foundation provides the CAC with supplemental staffing and support. In the five years of the Congressional App Challenge, the program has yielded 1134 App Challenges across 48 states. Thousands of functional apps have been created by over 25,000 students, and participant demographics surpass all industry diversity metrics.