US firm says it made Hong Kong student’s award-winning app ‘from scratch’

A US-based software development agency has said it was commissioned by the mother of a Hong Kong student to build from scratch a medication prescription app that was later submitted to academic competitions under the pupil’s name without its consent.

Ahmed Jemaa, co-founder of US-based AI Health Studio, said the company was not told that the MediSafe app it created would be submitted to the contests and argued the move was unfair to other student participants.

He also accused the mother of attempting to “control the narrative” after controversy broke out in June over whether her daughter was the sole inventor of the award-winning project.

In a social media post earlier in the week, Jemaa named his client as Roberta Pang, who is the wife of Ronnie Poon Tung-ping, owner of the Hepatobiliary-Pancreatic & Colorectal Surgery Centre. He said she had commissioned his team between March 2024 and June this year to develop MediSafe.

Their daughter, a Form Four student from St Paul’s Co-educational College in Mid-Levels, has submitted the app in competitions as her invention and has won eight awards in global contests.

Jemaa said MediSafe was a prototype designed to simulate prescription safety checks, flagging drug-to-drug interactions, allergy contraindications and warnings for renal or hepatic risks.