Yesterday the UW held its first annual Health Innovation Challenge, with 18 teams selected to show off their best out-of-the-box health science ideas, GeekWire reports. The competition was organized by the UW’s Foster School of Business, and team members came from both business and non-business backgrounds including computer science, biological and mechanical engineering, pharmacy, neurobiology and physics.
The winning team, a startup called Engage, was started by two WSU bioengineering students, Emily Willard and Katherine Brandenstein, and focuses on medical technology for developing countries. The startup took home $10,000 in prize money for their prototype of a lid that can attach to vaccine vials and sterilize needles every time they pass through, making them reusable. The second place winner is another startup, miPS Labs, which specializes in freezing customers' cells and creating stem cells from them, to be used later for regenerative therapies.
