Hong Kong – June 15, 2025 — A secondary school student from St. Paul’s Co-educational College (SPCC) who won international recognition at the Geneva Invention Exhibition for her AI-powered prescription platform is facing public scrutiny after online users revealed that the project was developed by a U.S.-based AI firm and tied to her father’s private medical centre.
The project, Medisafe, was widely publicised as the student’s personal innovation, boasting use by over 70 doctors and praised for its accuracy. But netizens discovered that the same AI solution is listed on the website of a U.S. company — AI Health Studio — and described as a deployment for the Hong Kong Hepatobiliary-Pancreatic and Colorectal Surgery Centre, founded by the student, Clarisse Poon’s father, a prominent liver cancer specialist.
Critics say the case highlights a growing problem of students repackaging outsourced or pre-built solutions to win science awards and enhance university applications. While not necessarily in breach of competition rules, the lack of disclosure about third-party involvement has raised red flags. “She didn’t build it, she branded it,” one commenter wrote.
After criticism emerged on social platforms like Threads, the student responded via LinkedIn, calling the backlash a form of cyberbullying and an attack on women in STEM. Clarisse Poon’s post accused critics of ignoring the time and effort behind the project, but was later deleted following further controversy. In her post, she pushed back publicly, claiming the award-winner had previously mocked secondary school STEM projects online while now calling for empathy and fairness.
Public attention has since shifted to the broader issue of “wrapper science” — the practice of packaging vendor-built systems or GPT-assisted work as original innovation. Some argue the student demonstrated strong project management, but others say misrepresenting authorship for awards and resume gain misleads judges and undermines real student efforts.
With AI tools and external vendors becoming more accessible, educators and organisers are now facing urgent calls to tighten disclosure standards for student submissions and clearly define the boundaries between coordination and creation in youth science competitions.
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The blog post was soon removed from the vendor’s website, but netizens had already archived it, preserving the details of the company’s involvement in the project. The student briefly unarchived her LinkedIn post; however, when questioned about academic integrity, the post disappeared once again.
