Announcing the winners...

PDMA Carolinas held its 14th annual Innovate Carolina Conference on April 22nd. A highlight of the conference was the presentation of the winners of the Student Innovation Contest. Fifty-six students participated this year, guided by 10 faculty advisors, with representation from Clemson, NCSU and Duke Universities.

Teams were assessed on detailed responses to 3 questions: 1) Is it real? 2) Can we win? and 3) Is it worth doing? Judges were from the PDMA Carolinas Board.

Winning teams have the opportunity to participate in PDMA’s Global Student Innovation Challenge at the Inspire Innovation Conference in New Orleans in September.

GRADUATE CATEGORY

1st Place - Durabloom from Duke University

The Team: Nicole Zimmer, Christopher Robinson, Adalberto Machin, Natalie Johnston, Natalie Strassheim, Quinn McCutcheon, Yuan-Ni (Sydney) Yeh, Saroja Ramachandra, Kimia Mahboub.

The Idea: A surgical tool to more effectively repair cerebrospinal fluid leaks in the mastoid of the skull posterior, that affects ~ 16,000 people every year.

View a video of their presentation here.

UNDERGRADUATE CATEGORY

1st Place: The Nairo/CS Medical from Clemson

The Team: Allison Jacob , Shreya Thammana, Caroline Peak, Cyndel Streeter, Jay Baek

Idea: A heated respiratory humidifier ventilator attachment for use during burn victim surgery. This product provides a more effective way of preventing hypothermia of the patient during surgery, while also enabling the operating room to be controlled to an optimum temperature for OR staff.

View a video of their presentation here.

2nd Place: EnteroFlux from NCSU

The Team: Andrew Hoang, Keith Abbey, Tyler Lee, Sasank Sivadanam, Alex Sprague,

Helen Tran

The Idea: An optical sensing system that notifies physicians and healthcare providers of an anastomotic leak, a common and potentially life-threatening complication associated with the colectomy procedure to treat colon cancer. This detection reduces the lag between diagnosis and repair, leading to better patient outcomes.

View a video of their presentation here.

3rd Place: ProbeMate from Duke

The Team: Amari Crittenden, Hannah Mekaru, Chandler Wimmer

The Idea: An ultrasonic device that improves the ergonomics associated with sonography, thereby reducing work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WRMDs). Probemate has been designed to address WRMDs specific to perinatal sonographers and OB/GYNs.

The ProbeMate team declined the opportunity to participate in the presentation portion of the competition so there is no video to share.