Los Angeles CA — XPRIZE announces the 11 finalist teams selected for the $2.25M Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE, a competition to develop breakthrough medical sensing technologies that will ultimately enable faster diagnoses and easier personal health monitoring. The final phase of the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE includes an online voting campaign accounting for 10% of a team’s overall score, with the remainder evaluated by a judging panel comprised of digital health and medical industry experts.
The 11 finalist teams are:
• ARCHIMEJ TECHNOLOGY (Evry, France), a start-up led by co-founder Francisco Vega, developing technology focused on making blood analysis available remotely at an affordable price.
• Atoptix (State College, Pa.), a team of electrical engineering professors at Pennsylvania State University, led by co-founder Perry Edwards, Ph.D., focusing on mobile-based sensing of blood and tissue to assess personal health information.
• Biovotion (Zurich, Switzerland), a team led by founder and CEO Andreas Caduff, Ph.D., developing a wearable multi-sensor concept for monitoring patients with chronic conditions.
• DMI (Cambridge, Mass.), also a finalist team for the $10M Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE and led by Eugene Y. Chan, M.D., CEO and Head Scientist at the DNA Medicine Institute, designing a sensor that will assess hundreds clinical lab tests via a single drop of blood.
• Eigen Lifescience (Stanford, Calif.), a team of engineering faculty and students from Stanford University led by Professor Shan Wang, Ph.D., developing an ultra-portable biosensor platform that embodies a clinical lab in a mobile device.
• Endotronix Wireless Health Monitoring (Woodridge, Ill.), a team led by co-founder and CEO Harry D. Rowland, Ph.D., designing a miniature, implantable sensor with an accompanying mobile “reader” that helps to remotely monitor patients with chronic heart failure.
• eyeMITRA (Cambridge, Mass.), a team affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and led by Ramesh Raskar, Ph.D., developing a mobile phone-based imager for the early detection of diabetic retinopathy, a leading cause of adult blindness.
• Golden Gopher Magnetic Biosensing Team (Minneapolis, Minn.), a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota, Mayo Clinic and several corporate partners in the life sciences, audio electronics repair and mechanical design space. Led by Professor Jian-Ping Wang, Ph.D., they are developing a sensing device that will simultaneously detect up to 10 health indicators.
• GUES (London, England), a team of electrical engineering faculty and researchers from Imperial College and led by Professor Esther Rodriguez-Villegas, Ph.D., developing a sensor with a companion mobile app that detects sleep apnea and hypopnea.
• Hemolix (Tampa, Fla.), a team of engineers led Anna Pyayt, Ph.D., head of the Innovative Biomedical Instruments and Systems Lab at the University of South Florida, developing a mobile phone-based technology for early detection of a dangerous pregnancy complication, HELLP syndrome.
• SensoDx (Houston, Texas), a participant in the first Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE competition (under the name Programmable Bio-Nano-Chip), led by John T. McDevitt, Ph.D., a biochemistry and engineering professor at Rice University and co-founder of SensoDx, LLC, focusing on sensor technology that can assess cardiac risk at a an early stage.
“It’s exciting to see the wide range of sensing technologies developed by our finalist teams and the potential that their solutions have to make health monitoring and diagnosis smarter, more personalized and instantly accessible.” said Grant Campany, senior director, Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE. “Our selected finalists represent the most promising and innovative submissions as determined by our expert judging panel and their work will ultimately enable individuals to be in control of not only initial stages of healthcare but their ongoing state of being.”
“Mobile, customized health applications continue to grow in popularity providing tremendous opportunity for sensing technologies that allow consumers to take charge of their own preventive health through self-monitoring, or that shorten the diagnostic process by moving it out of the lab,” said Henry Tirri, executive vice president, Nokia. “We’re delighted to help drive this movement and be part of the effort to bring these exciting innovations another step closer towards market availability.”
During the Qualifying Round, each team was required to submit a solution that will accurately, reliably and effectively collect meaningful data that can be used for identification or diagnosis of a disease, medical condition or health pattern. The judging panel selected the 11 most credible entries based on accuracy, technical innovation, ease-of-use, originality, portability, relevance to public health needs, integration with outside soft/hardware and multi-functionality.
Teams are competing for a $525,000 Grand Prize and up to five Distinguished Awards, each valued at $120,000. The winning teams must demonstrate the highest merit in the areas of accuracy and consistency, demonstration quality, technical innovation, human factors, market opportunity, originality, and user experience. The winning teams will be announced on November 10, 2014. This is the second of two consecutive, separate competitions in the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE. In October 2013, the Grand Prize for first competition was awarded to Nanobiosym Health RADAR, a Boston-based incubator and research institute led by Dr. Anita Goel.
Videos of the finalist teams and their breakthrough technologies can be viewed and voted on beginning today through October 30 at http://www.nokiasensingxchallengevoting.org
For more information, visit:
http://sensing.xprize.org
http://www.nokia.com/about-nokia