MedTechnovation – Winner’s Announcement
With Corona and other global health challenges prowling, it is the need of the hour to encourage innovation in the healthcare ecosystem. DERBI Foundation, along with central and state governments, and other eminent organisations, is providing assistance to the healthcare startups in converting the nascent innovative ideas into commercial business models that serve as solutions. The first edition of MedTechnovation was a part of this expedition.
MedTechnovation, a collaborative innovation initiative, was organised by DERBI Foundation and India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) along with Texas Instruments, Micron, ARM, MathWorks, and Forus Health as Technology partners. The program envisioned to overcome the healthcare startup and innovation challenges by supporting the innovators to validate their ideas, prototype the solution, build a successful business model and strategise their go-to-market plan.
The MedTechnovation event was structured into three stages.
Stage 1: Assisting the healthcare innovators to capture their ideas into a lucid template. The draft of the business idea would be powered by industry insights and the best practices shared by the veterans.
Stage 2: Assisting the shortlisted innovators in refining their ideas to fit best into the market. A customised intensive boot camp at DERBI Foundation would be provided by top-notch mentors from the healthcare ecosystem to help startups successfully map their business strategies.
Stage 3: The innovators would be provided with an opportunity to pitch their final staged startup business ideas to the jury and win the prizes.
The winners of MedTechnovation had the opportunity to win cash prizes, kits and licenses from technology partners, pitch for NIDHI Prayas grants of INR 10 Lakhs, and to participate in customised boot camps, avail incubation and lab support at DERBI Foundation. The three-staged event also assisted the innovators draft powerful applications and helped them pitch an innovative and winning business plan to the jury.
MedTechnovation witnessed pan India participation from 18 states with 103 innovators pitching their ideas. The innovators included students, healthcare innovators, and early-stage healthcare startups. 27 eminent healthcare experts from diverse background in healthcare, technology, and investment evaluated the participants.
The winners of MedTechnovation and Nidhi prayas grants were announced on 16th October 2020. Here is the complete report.
MedTechnovation Program
The virtual event commenced with a video of MedTechnovation being played followed by the introduction of the event. Dr Lakshmi Jagannathan, Chief Executive Officer at DERBI Foundation hosted the event and briefed about MedTechnovation. In her words, “Med-Technovation has reinforced the confidence in a collaborative approach to foster innovation and startup culture in India. We are happy that with the NIDHI Prayas support from NSTEDB, we have joined hands with corporate houses, to enable the startups to scale up faster.”
Winners Announcement
Dr Anita Gupta (Head, NSTEDB, DST, DST, Ministry of Science and Technology) announced the winners of Nidhi Prayas grant and Dr Satya Gupta (Chairperson, India Electronics and Semiconductor Association) announced the winners of MedTechnovation.
The first prize of MedTechnovation was won by Kozhnosys Pvt Ltd. The startup has developed CanScan – a VoC (Volatile organic compound) based breath analyser for cancer screening. It is an affordable cancer screening device that can detect early biomarkers of disease from exhaled breath. The device analyses the chemical composition of breath and tells whether cancer is present or not.
Heamac Healthcare Pvt Ltd won the second prize for Sensibil 360 — an intelligent discharge monitor for newborns. Sensibil uses cloud-connected solutions using a data-driven approach to predict and analyse the newborn chronic conditions and deliver the best in care to every neonate.
The third prize was won by Xfinito Biodesigns Private Limited, which has come up with Xeuron — an intelligent platform that supports early diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative disorders. The special designed smart footwear not only solves the problem in the leg movement but also comes with an advanced facility to track the progress of the patient with the help of batteries, vibrators and sensors attached at the precise foot pressure points.
Out of 103 participants, 11 innovators were announced as the winners of Nidhi Prayas grants. Some of the winners are Arun Somasundaram for his proposed idea of a low-cost bone densitometer to estimate bone density; Dr Vishal Rao (Innaumation Medical Devices Pvt Ltd) for a hands-free voice prosthesis speaking device for throat cancer patients; Dr Ganesh Rao (SmileFerry) for his idea of an indigenous low cost intraoral 3D scanner to make non-invasive dentistry affordable and convenient for the elderly. The list of other winners includes Ms Akitha Kolloju (Heamac Healthcare) for Sensibil 360TM, an intelligent newborn discharge monitor; Ms Akshita Sachdeva (Satin Healthech) for handheld Colposcopy Device for quick and automated cervical cancer screening and diagnosis; Dr Maneesh Sinha (PEncleator) for vibratory plasma button enucleation; Mr Kishore Kumar (Team Livonian) for Washbot that monitors proper hand sanitisation; Mr Sai Mukthevi for unique natural childbirth tool, Birthbuddy; Mr Sankalp for probe-based point-of-care UTI Detection Device that helps in early detection, fast diagnosis, and targeted treatment; Mr Velumurugan for Breath Quality Predictive Recovery Management System; and Mr Siddhart Nair for an intelligent medical technology platform for neurodegenerative disorders.
Panel Discussion
The winner’s announcement was followed by Panel discussion among the eminent dignitaries. Dr Anita Gupta discussed the participation of the central government in innovation and the steps taken by the central government to uphold the startup ecosystem. Ms Meena Nagarajan (Managing Director, KITS, Government of Karnataka) spoke about the involvement of Karnataka government and its initiatives that could contribute to swastha-atmanirbhar bharat. Mr Siddhartha Bhattacharya (Secretary General, NATHEALTH) and Mr Mukesh Sharma (Co-founder and Managing Director, Menteraa) explained about the healthcare industry, the companies in the healthcare field. Mrs Jilma Peruvangat (Founder & CEO, Kozhnosys Private Limited) expounded their winning innovative healthcare solution and delineated their experience with DERBI Foundation, and other similar organisations, along with the support of central and state governments.