Competition:
Given a challenge in the biomedical space, come up with a solution and pitch a startup business. There were about 2 dozen teams of 4-8 people each competing for a single 500$ prize.
Challenge Summary: Children are afraid of the doctors office. Create a solution to alleviate the problem.
My Solution:
This was the first "Startup" competition I had ever competed in so I didn't really know what to go for. After brainstorming I determined that kids were the most afraid when doctors had to poke and prod them with various equipment. For example, needles, blood pressure monitoring cuffs, or cold stethoscopes to name a few.
My solution was a device that can take common bio-metric data of a patient without touching them. This not only alleviates patients unease but reduce germ transmission which is highly important in a hospital or medical setting.
My device used optical coherence tomography with a special laser system to read pulse, blood pressure, blood oxygen, and blood glucose levels.
While interning at Praevium Research Inc., a company developing one of a kind laser technology, I got to learn tons about these laser systems, and the capabilities of imaging systems that use them. Utilizing this special knowledge and my own research into various methods for measuring these bio-metrics, I was able to communicate the feasibility of this new technology in a specific application.
For the business side of this pitch I determined the best ways to get first customers, talked to a couple doctors about the best way to introduce the technology to a broader market, as well as got up to speed on basic business metrics and language.
This was all a great learning experience for me and I had a lot of fun competing.
In the end my team won a 500$ first place prize.
