Health Innovation Challenge teams announced

The long-awaited Health Innovation Challenge is just around the corner, launching on March 3, 2016. A selection panel of more than 40 judges has narrowed down the initial applicant pool of 34 teams down to just 18 exceptional groups. These innovators are transforming the way we think about think about health and healthcare, using their incredible new technologies to make an impact on all facets of human health.

Hosted by the Foster School’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, the Health Innovation Challenge is a welcome companion to the Center’s other two long-running innovation competitions, the Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge and the UW Business Plan Competition.

 

6ixS Vascular Solutions
Le Zhen, Nicholas Zhen Hung, Isaac Lam, Jason Dang, Melissa Gile, Ellyce Shulman, Anna Nordstrom; UW Chemical Engineering and Foster School of Business

6ixS Vascular Solutions utilizes a breakthrough material to make lifesaving, long-lasting, off-the-shelf and low-cost synthetic blood vessel replacements that simultaneously provide solutions to narrowing, clotting and infection by optimizing healing.

AIBI
Chip Dong Lim, Daniel Galan; UW Design

AIBI is an allergy alert system that helps children and school staff to better respond to allergic reactions and stop the potentially fatal onset.

Appropriate Solutions
Kevin Cussen, Stacy Hanks, Sara Brostrom, Adam Zhu, Luiza Pampeo, Sam Wright; UW Foster School of Business, College of the Environment, Electrical Engineering

Our challenge is to save millions of lives by making cleaner burning biogas technologies inexpensive, reliable, and accessible enough for current customers of solid fuels to convert.

BCD
Sameer Dawande; UW Mechanical Engineering

BCD is a medical device company developing a system to rapidly identify blood clotting deficiencies and provide relevant, actionable information to caregivers.

croXwise
Maria Artunduaga, Jennifer Jenks, Don Smith, David Zerby; UW Global Health, Human Centered Design and Engineering, Biomedical and Health Informatics, Foster School of Business

croXwise is a mobile integrated mapping application that leverages existing data to decrease injury/death from motor vehicular accidents at dangerous intersections.

Engage
Emily Willard, Katherine Brandenstein; Washington State University Bioengineering

Engage works to improve medical technology in developing countries with scarce resources, initially focusing on reducing the spread of blood borne pathogens as a result of contaminated injections.

EpiForAll
Zachary Chen, Ha Seung Chung, Jazmine Saito, Wealth Salvador, Shawn Swanson; UW Mechanical Engineering, Materials Engineering

Our company’s goal is to provide easy-to-use epinephrine auto-injectors to treat anaphylaxis in economically impoverished countries to effectively address the orphan need.

FitTraction
Christian Taylor, Ian Turner, Justin Lee; UW Foster School of Business, Computer Science and Engineering

FitTraction is a web and mobile application that is going to revolutionize the fitness industry by improving motivation, accountability, and engagement resulting in higher member retention rates, more people involved in training, and healthier individuals.

HLTH
Daniel Dudley, Travis Chen, Anastacia Jaime, Yamato Abe; UW School of Medicine, Computer Science & Engineering, Human Centered Design & Engineering, and International Marketing

Our HLTH app empowers individuals (particularly low-income, underserved populations) to maintain medically-recommended preventative health schedules, as well as document their medical records.

miPS Labs
Alex Jiao, Jenna Strully, Ned Whalen, Rob Thomas, Aakash Sur, Winnie Leung; UW Foster School of Business, Bioengineering, Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education

miPS Labs allows you to preserve your youngest cells today to repair and regenerate your body tomorrow.

MultiModal Health
Brian Mogen, Tyler Libey, Dimi Gklezakos; UW Bioengineering and Computer Science and Engineering

MultiModal Health uses advanced data science and engaging software to quantify rehab, extending advanced treatment from the clinic to the home.

Novel Gram + Therapeutics
Ryan Delacruz, Omeed Faghih, Colin Johnston, Christopher Joyce; UW Pharmacy, Foster School of Business, Biochemistry and Neurobiology

Dr. Fred Buckner and Dr. Erkang Fan’s labs have discovered novel antibiotic compounds that have great bioavailability and potency against MRSA, VRE and other drug-resistant Gram-positive bacterial strains, have shown no observed toxicity in mice tests, and can be administered via IV or oral pill.

OmniBot
Michael Yacoub, Megan Hewitt; University of Washington — Bothell Biochemistry and Mechanical Engineering

We are testing the design of a gastric gas sensor that will in incorporated onto a tethered capsule endoscope to detect H. pylori infection in the stomach.

OstomyTech
Kevin Fukuhara, Yingying Li, Vikas Singh, Saket Potluri, Nihal Uppungunduri, Allyson Kline; UW Electrical Engineering, Applied Math, Biochemistry, Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Human Centered Design and Engineering

OstomyTech is a stoma management service designed to improve ostomate life through smart technology solutions.

PHSH BELT
Elizabeth Halsne, Nicole Chin, Kasey Acob, Ryan White, Wasinee Opal Sriapha; UW Rehabilitation Science, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Bioengineering

The PHSH (pronounced “fish”) is a non-elastic support belt that is able to provide safe, effective, non-invasive and comfortable stoma protection and abdominal wall support against herniation, restoring quality of life while reducing the health care costs to 1.2 million American ostomy patients.

The Terri Test
Kegan Moo, Katie Ducich, Allen Kim, Kelly Freeman, Meghna Sareen; UW Foster School of Business, Bioengineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Biochemistry

A paper test for Lyme disease using carbon nanotubes that overcomes many significant challenges of the current testing standards, making testing significantly more efficient and cost effective.

Z-ion+ Technologies
Marvin Mecwan, Ruying Chen, Sabrina Kamran, Marleny Santos; UW Bioengineering, Pharmacology, Foster School of Business

Z-ion+ technologies utilizes patent-pending technology to make non-stick, long-lasting, durable coatings that can be applied to any vascular medical device to prevent complications due to blood clots.

Zwitterink
Caroline Tsao, Julio Rojas-Espinoza, Michael Phuong, Thanadej Throngkitpaisan, Viet Nguyen; UW Chemical Engineering

In the era of tissue engineering expanding faster than we could image, the need for customizable and highly-biocompatible material is inevitable. Zwitterink is here to provide the tissue engineering field a novel material which can be 3D printed with cells and has different mechanical properties.