CIMIT Prize for Primary Healthcare

The CIMIT Prize for Primary Healthcare is a national competition open to graduate and undergraduate engineering students from accredited engineering programs. The competition seeks ideas for technologic innovations with great potential to support and catalyze improved delivery of healthcare at the frontlines of medicine. The top three student entrants (individuals or teams) will receive $150,000, $100,000 and $50,000, respectively*, to help advance their winning clinically-relevant, primary care solutions. The three prize winners will be selected from ten finalists, who will be chosen to advance to the final round from all submissions received by January 17, 2010. CIMIT’s goal in offering these major awards is to encourage engineering students to develop technological innovations that have great potential to enhance delivery of primary healthcare. Student collaboration and team submissions are strongly encouraged.

The CIMIT Prize for Primary Healthcare seeks ideas for technologic innovations with great potential to support and catalyze improved delivery of healthcare at the frontlines of medicine.

Technologies of particular interest are those which promise improving access to medical care, leveraging the skill of caregivers, automating routine tasks, increasing efficiency of workflow, supporting patients with chronic disease and their family caregivers, increasing compliance with care-protocols, reducing medical error, or augmenting the physician-patient relationship. Innovations are sought for use in any setting, not just that of the medical-practice office. The full range of venues of daily living, from home to work to shopping and beyond, present attractive opportunities for innovation, which can enhance the quality and continuity of primary care.

The tangible reward for the ultimate winners will be monetary prizes to the winning individual students or student teams to support further work in implementing or actualizing their prototype innovations. Specifically, up to ten students finalists will be provided with $10,000 each to develop a final full submission; and the first, second, and third place winners will be awarded $150,000, $100,000, and $50,000, respectively. In addition, CIMIT will provide national recognition to the winners and can offer help to facilitate the further development or successful implementation and possible commercialization of the innovations.

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

* The funds will be transferred to the student(s) home institution for appropriate dispersal.

Instructions on this page should be followed by the student finalists to submit a full proposal for the CIMIT Prize in Primary Healthcare.

All applications must use the CIMIT web-based submission system. The system is now open for submissions. The URL for the submission site is: https://precisionconference.com/~cimit. All finalists have been registered with the system. Log-in and click on "new submissions" and then "Make a new submission to CIMIT …" to access the online forms for CIMIT Primary Healthcare Prize.

To input your proposal online, you must update the pre-populated application demographic fields and upload a single file in a composite pdf format (less than 10MB in size) containing the following documents:

Project title
Name and contact information for the student team leader (email, phone, mailing address)
Names of all student team members, including department and level of education
Names, titles, and institutions of all non-student collaborators AND role in project (e.g. mentor, clinical advisor, technical advisor, etc.)
Name, title and contact information for the responsible institutional official, signature, and date (i.e. an "Institutional Official” is an individual with authority to accept responsibility for funds and to signoff on behalf of the applicant institution)
Name, title and contact information for department head or faculty mentor

Body of the project text (no more than 20 pages in length). Sections of the project text should include:

Aims
Specific goals
Methodology
Description of any prototype and/or pilot data
Comparative advantages and disadvantages with respect to other know technologies or approaches considered
Advantages over typical current primary care practices
Summary of conclusions

Additional pages of detailed figures (drawings, photographs, graphs, etc.), if needed, up to 10 pages in number. If your composite pdf exceeds 10 MB, please contact cimitprize@partners.org before the deadline to receive instructions for submission.

Video attachment is allowed IF useful in conveying function or results, no more than 10 minutes in length! Any videos you may have of your final projects can be posted to YouTube (or any other video hosting site) and the link included in your final submission. Please opt for the "private" posting option rather than the "public" posting.

All text must be in a readable font (at least Arial 11 point) and margins must be at least 0.7 inches.
You may replace a loaded pdf with a newer version until the deadline for submission.
Announcement of the three top winners will be made on June 30, 2010. Those three will receive $150,000, $100,000 and $50,000, respectively.
Email cimitprize@partners.org with questions.

December 1, 2009:        Submission process opens
January 17, 2010:           Letters of intent due
February 15, 2010:         Ten finalists announced
May 31, 2010:                  Final proposals due
June 30, 2010:                Announcement of first, second and third prize winners

Originality (disruptive technologies are sought, unconstrained by the forces of current fee-for-service reimbursement patterns, but offering better outcomes)
Leverage (applying innovations from fields outside of healthcare)

Impact (some measure of the scope of the impact on patient care)
Practicality (e.g., materials, cost, power requirements if relevant, “fit” with medical culture)
Accuracy (compelling case that false positives or negatives will be manageable, if the technology is diagnostic, or, of the technology is therapeutic, that the care will be safely and accurately delivered)
Generalizability (flexibility to fit different venues of practice and clinical scenarios)
Safety (contribution to reduction of current risk, and compelling case made that new risks would not be introduced)
Patients’ viewpoint (identification of patient demand and/or need, with data, if possible, from the literature)
Simplification of work processes
Cost-effectiveness

Time-to-market (identification of obstacles and appropriate tactics for surmounting them)
Use of Funds (the monies will be used in ways that lead to a significant advance)
Acceptance (clear explication that the innovation will contribute to patient comfort and convenience, while improving or speeding positive outcomes

These illustrative primary care examples of patient needs and potential design opportunities are not intended to constrain the opportunity space but to stimulate thought. Applicants should feel free to work from personal experiences and those of clinical collaborators.

Health and Wellness
A healthy 24-year-old woman with a sedentary lifestyle and stressful job feels motivated to develop strategies for weight management and long-term health. With her family history of heart disease, diabetes and cancer, prevention is her chief concern. How can technology enable patients to succeed at long-term personalized health management?

Living with Chronic Illness
A 16-year-old girl with insulin-dependent diabetes maintains an active schedule filled with soccer, band, and art. She wears a continuous insulin-infusion pump, frequently checks her blood-glucose levels and carefully plans her diet and activity to maintain her health. How can technology help her manage these complex calculations and support her desire to lead a "normal" adolescent lifestyle?

Mental and Cognitive Health
A 30-year-old male suffered multiple fractures and a traumatic brain injury in a motor vehicle accident two years ago. A multi-disciplinary team continues to work with him to manage physical and cognitive issues; he wants to do more for himself. How can technology enable patients struggling with mental health and cognitive disorders to increase the degree of self-management?

Alternative Care Models
A 48-year-old mother and full-time business executive must frequently disrupt her tight schedule to drive her kids to the physician’s office for evaluation of common childhood ailments, such as sore throats or rashes. These short office visits can take several hours out of her day with travel and wait-time. How can technology enable improved management of routine medical issues in a more convenient home or community setting?

Chronic Disease Management
An 82-year-old widower with hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure and arthritis lives alone and wishes to remain independent in his home as long as possible. He is becoming increasingly home-bound and socially isolated. How can technology enable continuous collaborative management of chronic disease by patient and care team, including medication management. How can technology–enabled social networks for peer support and care coordination be leveraged?

Design Your Own Primary Care Need
Using your own personal experience, describe a primary care scenario and the technology challenge your proposal seeks to solve.

Join our CIMIT Prize email list to be notified of the 2010 Winners and to receive notice of the 2011 Request for Applications (Fall 2010).