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9.15.10 Announcement: CIMIT Announces 2011 Prize Competition

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CIMIT Prize for Primary Healthcare Receives 78 Pre-Proposals from 44 Universities

CIMIT has received 78 Letters of Intent for its inaugural competition for the CIMIT Prize for Primary Healthcare. The letters serve as pre-proposals, and up to 10 teams will be chosen as Finalists to compete for the three top awards.

The breadth of response was extremely gratifying. Candidates represent 44 universities from 21 states. Names of the Finalists will be announced Feb. 9, after careful review of the entries by a diverse panel of clinical and technology experts. Each team of Finalists will be provided with $10,000, which will be used to fund expenses for further development of their idea. The 10 final proposals will be due May 31 and announcement of the three top winners will be made on June 30. Those top three teams will receive $150,000, $100,000 and $50,000, respectively.

The national competition was open to graduate and undergraduate engineering students from accredited engineering programs, and is designed to encourage development of technological innovation useful at the frontlines of healthcare, specifically to enhance delivery of primary care. 

Areas of particular interest included improving access to medical care, leveraging the skill of caregivers, automating routine tasks, increasing efficiency of workflow, supporting patients dealing with chronic diseases, increasing compliance with care protocols, and developing tools to enhance the physician-patient relationship.

"We are delighted to see the creativity, passion and ingenuity of engineering students in response to CIMIT's unique challenge to come up with innovative applications of technology to address issues in primary care,” said Ronald Newbower, PhD, chief technology officer at CIMIT and head of the CIMIT Prize effort.  “We expect significant benefit to healthcare to result from this entire process - and for several of the proposed projects to continue to fruition even if they do not win finalist status in the competition."

The CIMIT Prize is made possible through a generous gift from the Gelfand Family Charitable Trust, which will support the competition annually over the next five years.

Penny Ford-Carleton, a CIMIT program leader in Clinical Systems Innovation, said, “We are very pleased that we heard from students from all over the country, making it truly a national competition. We have received many excellent ideas targeting a wide variety of needs and look forward to great results from their further development.”