TECH-SAVVY school pupils made it to the finals of a national coding contest after designing an app which could save lives.

The Argus reported how Monmouth School played host to the regional section of Young Rewired State’s (YSR) Festival of Code last week, during which two teams from South Wales worked on new apps for the final held at Plymouth University over the weekend.

Ben Hope, 17, Harri Bell-Thomas, 17, and James Clifton, 15, all from Monmouth School, teamed up with home-schooled Melody Perry, 10, from Pontypool to build a revolutionary application, called ‘cudl’.

Ben said: “I know someone who has epilepsy, and I thought if they were about to have a fit, it would be so handy if they could contact the emergency services and their parents at the click of a button."

He added: “It wouldn’t just be for people with epilepsy – it would be for anyone with a medical problem.

“The app would have their addresses, phone numbers and medication stored and one button would text all of that out to emergency services and their parents at the same time.

“We’re working on the GPS side of it too, so the emergency services can tell where the user is.

The team beat around 160 teams to become one of 15 in the last round, but sadly lost out on the top spot.

As well as creating cudl, the group also made a website, http://cudl.io/ explaining how the app works.

They intend to continue developing it, and start testing it out in Monmouth.