CRN IMPACT Awards: Cogniss makes low-code platform for education, health app development

Leon Young wanted to make app development for education and health easier for his business 2and2, which has proved to be both expensive and time-intensive.

Young said multi-featured education and health apps typically cost between US$100,000 and US$500,000, relying heavily on developers and can take months to build.

In 2016, Young and 2and2 decided to make the first low-code platform for education, health and behaviour change app solutions with a new company called Cogniss.

“We were always frustrated by how complex and difficult education and health apps were to develop, as we were building solutions from scratch every time,” Young said.

“It was proving to be difficult for both our clients and ourselves, and very expensive. As a result, a lot of people who needed to build these sorts of solutions couldn’t afford it.”

The platform lets customers build apps on the Unity 3D engine base, only needing minimal C# coding, and create either regular interfaces or games. It is built on open source components like NodeJS and MongoDB to allow a cloud-agnostic approach, supporting AWS, Azure and other cloud providers.

Cogniss combines applied neuroscience, AI, big data, games and gamification into one platform, aiming to improve upon existing offerings like flashcard-based educational tools and learning management systems like Moodle and Blackboard.

Young said Cogniss has helped lower the cost of producing apps by 75 percent, and said the quality is also better with the company’s best practice and design built in without having to start from scratch each time.

The company is now aiming to transition to a no-code platform by next year, where users can make apps through a point-and-click interface.

“We’ve been building up mostly an enterprise business for people who want to build apps that drive behaviour change,” Young said.

“Whether that’s for an educational reason, mental health, physical health, travel, gambling disorders, to helping children and indigenous communities with early literacy.”

Cogniss’ sales have expanded to national and international government and enterprise customers through proof of concept and referrals.

Some clients include the Department of Education, the Victorian Department of Justice, water and waste management company Veolia and a number of startups. Universities have also started using Cogniss for research projects, including the University of Melbourne, Monash University, the University of Auckland, among others.

The company also aims to launch the Cogniss platform to the consumer, student and SME markets by next year.

Cogniss is a finalist in the 'Emerging Innovator' category in the 2019 CRN Impact Awards. For a list of all finalists and further details on the awards, please head to the CRN Impact Awards hub. The awards take place during the CRN Pipeline conference. You can get more information and purchase tickets here.