Kindo, an innovation built by a team of students from Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta (UMS), won a silver medal at the 8th World Invention Competition and Exhibition (WICE) 2026 in Malaysia. The innovation takes the form of an interactive platform for screening children's risk of developmental delay.
WICE 2026 is a competition held through a collaboration between the Indonesian Young Scientist Association and SEGi University & Colleges. The competition ran online from 10 to 14 September 2026, and in person from 20 to 24 September 2026 at SEGi University, Kota Damansara, Malaysia. WICE 2026 featured five main categories: Applied Life Sciences, Innovative Social Sciences, Applied Physics and Engineering, Environmental Sciences, and IT and Robotics.
The UMS team presented an innovation titled "Kindo: An Interactive Digital Screening Platform for Early Detection of Developmental Delay Risk in Children." Kindo team member Asrofi Noor Masithoh explained that the innovation was developed to address a need for child development monitoring that has so far been seen as falling short.
Previously, Indonesia's Ministry of Health had introduced a child development monitoring instrument for children aged 0 to 72 months back in 2012. But the system in use, particularly at primary health services like posyandu, is still largely done manually. In fact, monitoring often focuses only on physical aspects through anthropometric measurement.
"Growth and development monitoring in the community still mostly focuses on physical growth. Yet the developmental aspect of a child requires a specific instrument so that the risk of delay can be identified early on," she said, when interviewed on Tuesday (29/9/2026).
Kindo was born out of cross-disciplinary collaboration between UMS Nursing and Informatics students. It was designed to help parents and primary healthcare workers monitor a child's development across fine motor skills, gross motor skills, speech and language, and socialization and independence, in a more interactive way.
Kindo adopts the developmental pre-screening questionnaire (KPSP) established by Indonesia's Ministry of Health as the instrument for early detection of developmental issues in children aged 0 to 72 months.
The app also comes with a number of supporting features, including automatic scoring and interpretation, stimulation recommendations based on screening results, longitudinal records, a dashboard for healthcare workers organized by region, child growth charts, and a reminder system to help keep track of regular screening schedules. Going forward, Kindo's use could also potentially be expanded by integrating internationally standardized child development monitoring instruments.
Through this digitalization, the screening process is expected to become more practical, while also helping raise awareness among parents and healthcare workers about the importance of monitoring child development.
Asrofi said developing Kindo was a collaborative experience for students from different fields of study. The team, made up of students from Nursing, Informatics Engineering, Informatics Engineering Education, and the Nurse Professional Program, complemented each other's skills to turn the idea into a digital platform.
The UMS team consisted of Asrofi Noor Masithoh, Putri Azzahra Namora, Reja Arrafi, Airlangga Pradana Prakusa, Shafwan Aulia Rahman, and Tasya Annisa Yunita. Throughout the process, the Kindo team received guidance from Siti Arifah, S.Kp., M.Kes., Ph.D., as supervisor. As a lecturer in pediatric nursing, her guidance played a key role in digitalizing the KPSP instrument into the Kindo platform.
"As nursing students, we realized we couldn't bring this idea to life on our own. That's why we collaborated with friends from the Informatics Engineering and Informatics Engineering Education study programs to build the Kindo website," she explained.
The UMS team's success came through an international competition that brings together inventors, innovators, researchers, and students from various countries. WICE serves as a platform for participants to present their creativity and innovation, while also gaining experience exchanging ideas at an international level.
Asrofi hopes Kindo can become part of an effort to build a more proactive culture of child development screening, while also supporting the digitalization and integration of primary healthcare services.
"We hope that through Kindo, we can contribute to growing a proactive culture of child development screening, as well as supporting the digitalization and integration of the primary healthcare service system," she said.
Writer: Yusuf Ismail
Editor: Maysali Sudarwati
Translator: Farizal Luqman Majid
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