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Carle employees among finalists competing in Spring 2021 Health Make-A-Thon

Carle employees among finalists competing in Spring 2021 Health Make-A-Thon
Twenty teams of innovators ranging from middle school to college and medical students, to healthcare providers will pitch their health and wellness ideas to a panel of judges on Saturday, April 17, at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine’s third annual Health Make-A-Thon competition. Finalist teams chosen from a field of 94 entries from across Illinois, are all vying for a chance at $10,000 in resources to take their ideas from dream to reality.

Carle lab assistant Amy Minas is among finalists vying for the prize with her Pedipressure monitor. She saw the invitation on Carle’s employee website and decided to enter her idea based on her previous 7 1/2 years of experiences as a nurse’s aide where she worked with patients predisposed to having problems with their feet through diabetic neuropathy, gait issues or even missing toes.

“We all have these wearable devices to monitor various aspects of our health so why not have orthotics with  sensors to monitor pressure points on foot tissue and proactively prevent foot wounds to those areas?” she said. “Patients needing gait retraining or those who have been in bed for a long time could benefit from such a device,” she said.

Minas is one of three Carle employees in the finals. Others are Mamadi Papus Keita, MD, with Hologram Medical Training and Michael Tsipursky, MD with the Nano-Hyperbaric Delivery System for Chronic Wound Care. Click here for a complete listing of finalists.

Anyone is welcome to attend the live virtual event from 2 to 5 p.m. and be part of the voting, but advance registration is required.

The Health Make-A-Thon democratizes health innovation by challenging anyone from citizen scientist to expert to submit their ideas for solving broad-based health problems through new innovations or processes. Finalist teams will enter the ‘dolphin tank’ to deliver a rapid-fire pitch to a panel of judges and a live ‘virtual’ audience.

Virtual audience members can get involved by voting for their favorite innovations. The ten winning teams will each receive $10,000 in resources, materials, and mentorship to develop their ideas into working prototypes through the Health Maker Lab network at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

This year’s entries varied widely demographically and geographically. Teams from 16 Illinois counties submitted proposals. Of the twenty finalist entries, four came from medical students, three of those from the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. Two teams are students at the University of Illinois Laboratory High School. One entry is a Chicago-area eighth-grade student, and three are physicians or staff from Carle Health.

This year’s Make-A-Thon also includes an address by Yemaya Bordain, PhD., the director of Global Public Sector and Internet of Things Group Sales for Intel and a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumna.

For more information about the Make-A-Thon competition, click here.

For information more the Health Maker Lab here.
 

Categories: Culture of Quality, Redefining Healthcare, Community

Tags: College, Innovation, Research