The Biomedical Engineering Innovation, Design and Entrepreneurship Award (BMEidea) competition is an arena for whippersnapper collegiate bioengineers to strut their stuff. The competition, hosted by the NCIIAA (National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance), challenges teams to come up with an inventive, commercially feasible, and relatively legal medical device.
Last years winners came up a novel oral Rotavirus vaccine, a light-based therapy for Parkinson’s, and a nerve regenerating nano-patterned graft. Let’s see how this years competitors stacked up.
Here are the winners from a press release on the contest:
The first prize — a cash award of $10,000 — was awarded to Rapid Suture from Stanford University. [not pictured –ed.]
This team created a small, inexpensive device that allows for the quick, safe and easy closure of laparoscopic incision wounds after surgery. The device should make for easier suturing, leading to reduced procedure times, fewer surgical risks and faster patient recovery.
The second cash prize of $2,500 was given to the KMC ApneAlert team from Northwestern University. This team’s device monitors the abdominal breathing movements of premature infants and sounds an alarm when the infant stops breathing. The apnea monitor should allow for better detection of apnea episodes, improving the success of the Kangaroo Mother Care program and reducing apnea-related deaths among premature infants in the developing world.
The third prize, $1,000 in cash, was given to the REGEN team from Johns Hopkins University. REGEN is a small implantable receptacle that diffuses pain-relieving analgesic at a controlled and sustained rate directly at the site of a laparoscopic incision. [top two pictures –ed.] This new approach to post-laparoscopic surgery pain management should facilitate faster wound recovery; improve safety; and decrease costs while minimizing side effects.
Great work! Now just start filing those 510(k)s.
Read the press release here…
UPDATE: A rep for the awards tells Medgadget that the text of the press release has been changed: “This team has developed a small, inexpensive device that allows for quick, safe and easy surgical tissue manipulation during laparoscopic procedures, leading to fewer surgical risks and faster patient recovery.”