One of our goals at Noosphere is to unite researchers, scientists, makers, and enthusiasts from all over Ukraine and the world. We strive to create favorable conditions for those who want to develop innovations and design cutting-edge technologies. In this regard, Max Polyakov devised the concept of Noosphere Engineering School in 2014. The school has since been home to a number of innovative projects. Here we tell you about the great success of the leading one – MyPol.
In 2015, there was a difficult situation in two Ukrainian regions – Donetsk and Lugansk. Through the occupation, many communication landlines were destroyed, and those that weren’t, often connected to the occupied police departments. Therefore, residents of these regions could not call or otherwise communicate with the Ukrainian police. A few eager people, led by future MyPol CEO Dmytro Podvorchansky, designed a solution. During the next two days, they established themselves at Noosphere Engineering School in Dnipro and, together with its students, created the first MyPol prototype – a free mobile application for connecting citizens and law enforcement.
The app was originally called MyPolice. The main feature of the app is to make an instant police call just in one click. A user presses the SOS button and appropriate law enforcement officers immediately receive information about the person and their location. The app also provides access to police station and emergency room maps, operational reports on the city and regional situations, and the ability to evaluate the work of a police officer by a system of tokens. Later in 2015, the MyPolice project was financially supported by Noosphere and personally by Max Polyakov.
With the help of the National Police in Dnipro, the MyPolice team tested the app and received feedback from law enforcement. Prior to the main release, over 800 Dnipro police officers used and tested the app for 3 months. On August 24, MyPolice was officially launched in Dnipro city.
In 2017, the MyPolice team faced two problems. The first one appeared in Mariupol, a city of the neighbor region to Dnipro. Some of the developers violated intellectual property rights and completely copied the app with all the functionality and visual design. The other problem was related to the name. According to Ukrainian national laws, it is prohibited to name private companies, firms, apps etc. with words and symbols of national governmental structures, which includes “police”. The team persevered and overcame these problems, with the new, upgraded app being named MyPol. Despite this name, the app is still known as MyPolice in other countries where it operates.
In 2018, MyPol was launched in 10 regions: Dnipro, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Chernivtsi, Zhytomyr, Ivano-Frankivsk, Poltava, Lutsk, Zaporizhzhya and Kharkiv. In 2019, the app covered all unoccupied Ukrainian territories, except Kyiv city and region. Through working with local police and reviewing user feedback, the MyPol team is constantly improving app functionality.
In February 2020, the app was integrated into police departments in Kyiv city and the region. In March 2020, MyPol became the official app of National Police of Ukraine. MyPol handed over all the rights on the app to the Ministry of the Interior. Currently, the team is working with foreign countries and companies and promoting the app on the international market. At Noosphere, we believe that synergy of science, business and technology can significantly improve the quality of our lives and MyPol is the best proof of this.