Health Technology Showcase

Overview

Each year, we're impressed by what our students learn and accomplish in Stanford Biodesign’s project-based courses. Their unmet needs are compelling and their nascent solutions are exciting. As a result, many of the teams aren’t ready to stop working on their projects when their classes come to a close.

Some of these motivated teams compete for and are awarded Biodesign NEXT extension funding to continue working on their ideas. With mentorship and support from Stanford Biodesign, the students de-risk their early-stage technologies and business plans, with the hope of ultimately making a difference for patients.

We celebrate their progress at our annual Health Technology Showcase – a gathering where teams share their inventions with other students, faculty, and staff across Stanford. This year, the event featured keynote remarks by Greta Meyer, former Biodesign student and co-founder of Sequel, a high-performance tampon for female athletes, as well as project presentations and prizes for the teams.

Learn more about some of this year’s participating teams by exploring the stories below.

AssessMed: Optimizing Care and Reducing Costs with Hospital-At-Home

The AssessMed team is developing software to help clinical case managers more easily identify inpatients who are candidates for hospital-at-home care and to better track their healing journey.
Circardium: Improving the Lives of Newborns with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome

The Circardium team is developing a wireless implant to measure blood flow more accurately and less invasively after surgery, to improve care for critically ill infants with congenital heart defects.
ColoTech: An Early-Stage Colorectal Cancer Detection Method that is Easy to Swallow

ColoTech is designing an ingestible pill for high-risk, colonoscopy-hesitant populations as a unique exogenous biomarker for one of the deadliest cancers, colorectal cancer.

FunGuys: Leveraging Fungi to Reduce the Harmful Impacts of Rice Straw Burning

The FunGuys team is genetically engineering a fungus that could quickly and easily degrade rice straw and turn the agricultural waste product into an eco-friendly, valuable commodity for farmers.
GreenScreen: Improving Immigrant Mental Health with a Streamlined Solution

The stress immigrants experience when completing immigration documentation can be debilitating. GreenScreen eases this burden with AI-powered error-checking software.
My Journey: Making Mental Health Support Accessible to LGBTQ+ Teens

The My Journey digital app is intended to provide personalized cognitive behavioral therapy to address the mental health-related conditions experienced by queer teens.

Overview

It was another year of discovering compelling needs and exciting solutions in Stanford Biodesign’s project-based courses. As in prior years, teams presented their inventions to other students, faculty, and staff at the annual Health Technology Showcase. Mika Eddy, a former Biodesign student and a co-founder of Malama Health, a digital solution for managing gestational diabetes, delivered the keynote address this year. Serosense was recognized for the most compelling need, and the Brainiacs won for most compelling solution!

Learn more about some of this year’s participating teams by exploring their stories below.

DemCare Provides a System that Enables Physicians and Caregivers to Better Monitor Treatment for Dementia Patients

Caring for patients with dementia can be challenging. DemCare helps by providing more consistent, actionable information to physicians and caregivers to improve care while respecting the patient’s privacy and dignity.
GetMoovin Encourages Seniors to Exercise by Envisioning Their Desired Future Activity Levels

Inactivity is a major driver of healthcare costs. GetMoovin prompts seniors to consider what they’d like to be able to do in their final decade, and then suggests exercises to help ensure they reach that goal.
Motherly Increases Maternal Health Confidence to Improve Postpartum Health Outcomes

New moms are not always taught what to expect and how to care for themselves postpartum. Motherly provides community-sourced patient education, and remote patient monitoring and interaction with caregivers.

Serosense aims to help patients receive the right anti-anxiety medication

Anti-anxiety medications often come with awful side-effects, so Team Serosense has created a mechanism to personalize treatment plans to reduce unintended consequences.
NeuroBeat Reduces Subjectivity in Concussion Diagnosis by Measuring a Physiological Response

The Brainiacs team devised a way to use heart rate variability, an indicator of how well a body’s autonomic nervous system is functioning, to help determine if an athlete sustained a concussion.

2021-22

We were delighted to be back together in-person for the June 2022 Health Technology Showcase, which convened students from across campus with an interest in health technology innovation. This year, the event featured keynote remarks by Marissa Pittard and Chris Olmanson, former Biodesign students and co-founders of Beaming Health, as well as project presentations and prizes for the teams. Team “TrueTone,” which created a next-generation sunscreen solution for all skin tones, won the award for most compelling need. “Anxieteam,” which designed an oral retainer to alleviate the need for an extensive hospital stay to diagnosis epilepsy, won the award for the most compelling solution. As always, this was a great community-building event!

NiQ helps parents navigate their baby’s first days home from the neonatal intensive care unit

Transitioning home with a newborn who has spent time in NICU can be challenging. NiQ is designed to provide answers and educational material to help parents adjust.
A next generation skincare solution for all skin colors

People of color have fewer incidences of melanoma but often are diagnosed at later stages and have worse outcomes. TrueTONE enables everyone, of all skin tones, to feel more comfortable wearing sunscreen so that they are more likely to avoid the harmful effects of ultraviolet exposure.
Supporting expecting mothers from preconception until after they’ve given birth

Malama, which means “to nurture” in Hawaiian, is a data-driven, digital app to help women live healthier lives from preconception to postpartum by providing personalized health solutions, beginning with gestational diabetes.
Relieving Chronic Pain

Musculoskeletal pain care requires a holistic approach so Team Relieve created a digital platform that combines a smart treatment marketplace, data-driven insights, and community support for comprehensive pain management.

An inexpensive diagnostic test for Group B Strep could help save the lives of 150,000 babies each year

Group B Strep: A Group B Strep (GBS) infection can be passed from a mother to child during pregnancy and birth, leading to meningitis, pneumonia, sepsis, or even death. Baby MACK is developing an inexpensive diagnostic platform to reduce the cost of testing in low-resource settings.
An Oral Retainer Could Alleviate the Need for an Extensive Hospital Stay to Accurately Diagnose Epilepsy

Epilepsy affects 1 in 26 people worldwide, but obtaining an accurate diagnosis can be expensive and time-consuming, which means people may live with untreated seizures for a decade or more.
Personalized Smart Compression for Better Managing Orthostatic Hypotension

The Stand Up Inc. technology improves upon existing solutions for individuals with orthostatic hypotension by offering a motor-driven compression garment that constricts lower extremities to mitigate changes in blood pressure.

2020-21

We had another fantastic virtual showcase in June 2021, featuring the exciting projects profiled below. This year, participants were able to vote for their favorite needs and solutions. The award for the most compelling unmet need went to team “PCR,” which is tackling a better approach to bladder pain syndrome. The prize for the most promising solution went to team “CoVer,” which is developing an inexpensive nasal drop to help prevent COVID-19 in a low resource setting. Congratulations to all of these motivated students!

Improving Treatment for Bladder Pain Syndrome

Bladder pain syndrome is a debilitating disorder that primarily affects women. Although there is no cure, one effective therapy involves an intravaginal injection that is difficult to perform. To help, a team of Capstone students developed a device that helps practitioners achieve the correct injection angle with minimal training.
Digital Health Solutions for Rheumatoid Arthritis

To help the millions of people who struggle with rheumatoid arthritis, a team of students in the Biodesign Digital Health course developed a remote monitoring system that helps patients manage their condition and improves the effectiveness of provider interventions.
Support for Parents of Children with Special Needs

Raising a special needs child takes a financial, emotional, and physical toll on parents. To ease the burden, a team from the Biodesign Digital Health course developed an app to help parents access providers, social and educational services, insurers, and peer support.

An Affordable Way to Prevent COVID-19

To advance the development of an inexpensive nasal drop that can prevent COVID-19, a team of students was asked to find a way to purify antibodies from chicken egg yolks without sophisticated lab equipment. Working with Biodesign mentors, the team found away to use simple materials, like salt, vinegar, and a food processor, to develop a process suitable for low-resource environments.
Integrating Wellness Services into Student Lives

PhD students experiencing mental health struggles often bypass traditional wellness resources because they don't address the real problem – their overwhelming workloads. A team from the Biodesign Digital Health course addressed this by creating a wellness app that helps students better manage their time and get more support from their academic advisors.
Preventing Concussion in High-Impact Sports

Sports-related head injuries remain common despite the use of protective helmets. After learning that most helmets are designed to absorb only one of the two types of force that cause most concussions, a team of Biodesign Club students developed a helmet that uses multiple layers to protect against both.

2019-20

While we weren’t physically able to convene in 2020 due to COVID-19, we’re no less proud of our NEXT teams!

Read about the projects from the 2019-20 academic year below, some of which are still active!

Better Outcomes for Injured Athletes

Athletes often struggle to complete the tedious at-home physical therapy required to fully recover after an injury. This motivated a team from the Biodesign for Digital Health course to build a digital platform and sensor-equipped sleeve to deliver a customized rehab program, monitor progress, correct form, and provide friendly competition to keep athletes engaged through full recovery.
A Digital Approach to Fracture Prevention

Osteoporosis affects nearly one-third of women over 65 and results in significant fractures, in part, because patients don’t adhere to their treatment plans. When students in the Biodesign for Digital Health course learned that insufficient patient education was part of the problem, they developed Osteotec, a one-stop digital shop for disease information and management.
Bridging the Employment Gap

85 percent of college-educated individuals with autistic spectrum disorder are unemployed. One team of students from the Biodesign for Digital Health course is helping address this challenge with a digital platform that helps recruiting teams better understand and engage with these unique job candidates.

Improving Onchocerciasis Diagnosis

Onchocerciasis is a parasitic disease that causes severe itching and can lead to blindness. While effective treatments are available, obtaining them relies on a painful and often inaccurate diagnostic protocol. To help patients get treatment with less pain and more precision, a team of students from the Senior Engineering Capstone course developed a new approach.
Helping Parents Care for Preemies

Bringing a preterm infant home from the hospital can be a stressful experience for parents as they struggle with detailed care instructions and the need to monitor multiple health parameters. To address this challenge, a team of students from the Biodesign for Digital Health course built an app-based care platform that eases the transition by providing clinically-validated resources and support.
Monitoring Shunt Performance in Hydrocephalus

Patients with hydrocephalus have excess cerebral spinal fluid that must be continuously drained through an internal shunt. However, these shunts are prone to blockages that are hard to detect. To better manage the condition, a team of students from the Biodesign Fundamentals course designed Shunt Clip, a monitor that can detect shunt failures early and non-invasively.

Thank You!

On behalf of the Stanford Biodesign team, thank you for all of your hard work this year. We’re inspired by your dedication and enthusiasm, and we wish you the best of luck as you continue these projects and/or tackle other important healthcare needs.