The annual Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge, supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and VentureWell, today announced eight winning and five honorable mention undergraduate teams that designed innovative health technologies to address important clinical problems. The prizes, valued in total at $115,000, went to teams from universities across the country.
The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), which initiated and leads the DEBUT Challenge, is joined by three additional NIH institutes: the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), the NIH Office of AIDS Research (OAR), and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), along with VentureWell, a nonprofit higher education network that supports scientific and technological innovation and entrepreneurship in higher education. The eight awards will be presented during the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) annual conference on October 6-9, 2021.
“The variety of projects presented this year was impressive and we were especially excited to see students tackling issues highlighted by the global pandemic,” said Bruce Tromberg, Ph.D., NIBIB director. “These students quickly developed creative yet simple solutions to important medical problems, demonstrating the spectacular promise of the future biomedical engineering workforce.”
NIBIB selected three winning teams for designs that excel based on four criteria: the importance of the problem being addressed; the impact on clinical care; design innovation; and the process of ideation or existence of a functional prototype. The first place “Steven H. Krosnick Prize” of $20,000 went to Eucovent, a medical device that allows multiple patients to be treated with a single ventilator. The University of South Florida team developed a device that delivers different pressures and volumes to each patient from the same ventilator. Eucovent addresses some of the safety concerns traditionally associated with co-ventilation and the device can be used in low-resource settings such as rural areas, military environments and natural disaster scenarios.
The second prize of $15,000 was awarded to a team from Rice University, Texas, for developing CephaloPump. The negative pressure pump was designed to treat low pressure hydrocephalus in patients who cannot be treated with the traditional shunt system. Hydrocephalus is a condition in which there is an abnormal buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles of the brain, which can cause brain damage. The device can operate within physiologically relevant pressure ranges, monitor differential pressure continuously, and adjust pressures with minimal error.
The third prize of $10,000 went to a team from Columbia University, New York, for their mobile phone application to monitor the progress of glaucoma. EyePhone works in coordination with a cardboard virtual reality headset to create a virtual reality field for at-home visual field testing. The device uses existing visual field testing algorithms to evaluate a person’s vision outside of the doctor’s office, promoting more regular and accessible monitoring of glaucoma progression.
NIH awarded three additional awards sponsored by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), the Office of AIDS Research (OAR), and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), respectively, on health technologies for low-resource settings, HIV/AIDS, and cancer. NIMHD awarded $15,000 to a team at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, for its cost-effective point-of-care sickle cell disease (SCD) screening device, designed for deployment in low- and middle-income healthcare settings. Modeled after the common pregnancy test, the goal is to reduce the high rate of infant death due to SCD. OAR awarded $15,000 to a Texas A&M team that developed a 3D-printed point-of-care device designed for early HIV diagnosis. Finally, a team from Duke University in North Carolina received the $15,000 NCI award for LowCostomy, an affordable colostomy bag that gives cancer patients access to life-saving ostomy procedures. This technology will benefit colon cancer patients after colon resection in low-resource settings.
“We are committed to nurturing the next generation of researchers and that is why we champion competencies that harness the intellectual capacity of young innovators,” said Dr. Eliseo Pérez-Stable, director of the NIMHD. “By fostering and supporting a culture of innovation, we are paving the way for students to think innovatively and develop cost-effective healthcare tools that will improve lives, especially for underserved communities.”
VentureWell selected two more projects taking into account two additional criteria: market potential and patentability. The $15,000 VentureWell award went to AsculBand, a project at the Georgia Institute of Technology. AsculBand is a simple and unique patient-facing stethoscope with an accompanying app that provides 50% clearer and 100% louder audio compared to leading standard digital stethoscopes currently used by doctors. It can send pre-recorded, real-time data from the patient’s heart and lungs to doctors to help them expand their current virtual physical examination capabilities.
The $5,000 VentureWell Design Excellence Award went to a team at Stanford University, California, that developed a modified needle guide that enables transvaginal delivery of medications to the bladder by facilitating targeting and successful injection into the trigone area of the bladder. The device includes an external needle guide that would allow non-specialized doctors to administer medications with greater precision.
DEBUT received 76 applications from 47 universities in 26 states this year, involving nearly 400 students.
Read more about each winning project and watch videos of the teams
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About the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB): NIBIB’s mission is to design the future of healthcare by leading the development and accelerating the application of biomedical technologies. The Institute is committed to integrating engineering and physical sciences with biology and medicine to advance our understanding of diseases and their prevention, detection, diagnosis and treatment. NIBIB supports research and development of emerging technologies within its internal laboratories and through grants, collaborations and training. More information is available on the NIBIB website.
The Office of AIDS ResearchPart of the Office of the Director, plans and coordinates the scientific, budgetary, legislative, and policy elements of the NIH AIDS research program. Additional information, including the trans-NIH strategic plan and budget, is available at www.oar.nih.gov.
About the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD): NIMHD leads scientific research to improve minority health and eliminate health disparities by conducting and supporting research; plan, review, coordinate, and evaluate all research on minority health and health disparities at NIH; promote and support the formation of a diverse research workforce; translate and disseminate research information; and foster collaborations and partnerships. For more information about NIMHD, visit www.nimhd.nih.gov.
About the National Cancer Institute (NCI): NCI leads the National Cancer Program and NIH’s efforts to dramatically reduce the prevalence of cancer and improve the lives of cancer patients and their families, through research on cancer prevention and biology, the development of new interventions, and the training and mentoring of new researchers. For more information about cancer, visit the NCI website at cancer.gov or call the NCI contact center, the Cancer Information Service, at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): The National Institutes of Health, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 institutes and centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The NIH is the primary federal agency that conducts and supports basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures of common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
