5 Student Startups That Could Transform Healthcare
Originally posted on Strikingly Stories.
“It occurred to me that there was no difference between men…so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.” Many entrepreneurial students, and not just the narrator of The Great Gatsby, have taken this insight to heart. But the prodigies that we profile below seem to have taken it to heart, and then moved it to their massive heads, where it awakened the raw power of their technical know-how and unstoppable work habits, leading to healthcare startups so ingenious that the rest of us feel a little lame for passing around wishy-washy quotes, while people who can’t legally have a beer are already changing the world.
Smarter Bionic Hands
IntentSense bionic gloves are not specifically designed to pummel your ego, but when reading about the concept and its inventors, it can feel that way. Adithya Ganesh and Vinjay Vale were in high school and middle school, respectively, when they recognized the limitations of current bionics for finger amputees, and developed a smart alternative. Most bionic limbs take their orders through electromyography (EMG), in which the user contracts large muscles with no normal role in the intended movement. The contractions are then sensed by electrodes that signal a corresponding motion of the device. Needless to say, learning to use an EMG system takes persistence and dedication; many amputees find them impossible to master and opt for simpler prosthetics.
This is where IntentSense comes in. For amputees missing some — but not all — fingers on one hand, EMG offers too much freedom, since fingers almost always work as a team to carry out a small number of “use patterns,” e.g. grabbing a cup, making a fist, or expressing road rage. A bionic glove can use flexion sensors to identify the use pattern that the intact fingers are trying to perform, and then order the bionic fingers to join in. But the devil is in the details — or in this case, the code. Adithya and Vinjay had to develop sophisticated pattern-classification algorithms that consistently “sense” the users “intent,” eliminating the need for a clumsy EMG interface. In a stunning act of generosity, the team “open sourced” their code and assembly instructions. Their breakthrough garnered Adithya a Thiel Fellowship.
To review: compassionate programming prodigies develop award-winning technology from scratch that could make life almost normal for thousands of amputees, and then give it to the world for free. Even if their technology is someday used by time-travelling robot assassins, it’s hard not to admire them.
Remote Diagnosis for Skin Conditions
Few things can be more frustrating than waiting weeks to see a doctor for something than can become dangerous in days, and which can be diagnosed on sight — melanoma, in this case. Liz Asai and Elliot Swart were keenly aware of this when, as sophomores at Yale, they began working on a system that lets anyone send clinical quality pictures of their skin to dermatologists. The result was 3Derm. The company offers a handheld device that takes high-quality 3D images of skin. Patients then send these to their dermatologists, who decide if moles and lesions look cancerous. Some dermatologists have said that the images are better than what they use in their own practice.
Liz and Elliot are also building a triage referral system, which will help dermatologists see the most urgent cases first. 3Derm’s founders are the youngest-ever recipients of the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research Phase I grant. They also won the Healthbox 2013 Innovators Award, and placed first in the Collegiate Inventors Competition. The days of inspecting yourself nervously in the mirror while wishing divine retribution on the healthcare system may soon be over.
Personalized Medication App
The good news: we have drugs for more conditions than ever before. The bad news: only about half of Americans take them as prescribed. “Compliance” problems are thought to cost the US healthcare system almost $300 billion each year, and a number of startups have come to the rescue with apps that enforce a strict medication routine. But Delian Asparouhov, then a sophomore at MIT, saw that these apps often failed for the same reasons that traditional calendars and alarms did. For one, they were as inflexible as a drill instructor, hassling the user at exactly the predetermined time, whatever he or she was up to. For another, they couldn’t “tell on” their users. (It is a truth universally acknowledged, that in a battle of wills between a human and a small object with an off-switch, the human tends to win.)
Delian then developed Nightingale, a digital nurse that can be flexible and firm as the situation demands. The app uses accelerometer data to learn the user’s habits and send reminders at the opportune time — after a run, say. But Nightingale also broadcasts medication complianceon a “dashboard” that can be viewed by physicians and family members. The app got considerable press for its innovative features, and Delian was granted a Thiel Fellowship to extend his vision. Florence would have been proud.
Portable Labs for the Developing World
Centrifuges are a centerpiece of the modern healthcare arsenal. Used to separate the components of blood and other body fluids into layers, they are the basis for many rapid diagnostic tests, and extend the “transportation life” of blood samples when further testing is needed. The catch: most models require an uninterrupted electrical source, which can be hard to come by in developing countries. If there’s one thing more frustrating than having to wait weeks for a melanoma diagnosis, it’s having to wait the rest of your life for a test that can only be performed in a city you’ll never have a chance to visit.
CentriCycle offers an elegant solution. University of Michigan student Carolyn Yarina created the company to develop and manufacture a manually-powered centrifuge. The device would cost only $100 and could separate blood within four minutes, indicating when the right speed has been reached and when the samples are done. CentriCycle has already been honored at multiple contests and conferences, taking first place in “social enterprise” at the Entrepreneur You competition. It has the potential to save millions of lives, and it all began with someone asking “If millions of people need these, why don’t we just spin them by hand?” — a question that everyone else probably wanted to ask but assumed was stupid. Let that sink in for a moment.
Vaccines Against Cancer
“Cancer doesn’t have to be life-threatening; you just have to teach your body how to fight it.” This notion, almost new-agey in its audacity, is the force behind Immudicon, which bases its up-and-coming treatments on cutting edge research that its founder began in high school. Riley Ennis launched the company while a student at Dartmouth, and has continued his pioneering work on four technologies, all of which aim to enlist the immune system to destroy tumors or track chronic illness.
The concept behind his “Macrovax” vaccine has already gone viral, with its promise to generate antibodies against proteins found only on the surface of tumors. Antibodies are specialized proteins produced en masse in the bloodstream. Each has two “arms” that selectively grab foreign proteins, unique to certain germs and parasites. The “tail” of each antibody recruits other blood proteins to puncture and destroy the suspicious cell, and can also flag down white blood cells and other “effector cells,” which eat the intruder. Vaccines can introduce a new protein to the body’s list of “usual suspects,” creating a squadron of specialized antibodies that will mark any cell bearing the forbidden protein. An effective vaccine for cancers would let the body target some kinds of tumors with pinpoint precision, and without the unhealthy side effects of chemo, radiation therapy, or even surgery.
For his work Riley has been recognized by the Intel International Science Fair, the BIO Convention’s BioGENEius Challenge, the AXA Equitable Achievement Award, the National Young Inventors Gallery, and the Virginia Academy of Science. If Immudicon’s concept makes it to clinical testing and beyond, it could truly revolutionize cancer treatment. Arthur C. Clarke must have had advances like this in mind when he wrote that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” What could be more magical than taking a goofy trope from faith healers and mystics, and with a wave of your pipette, turning it real?
What They All Did Right
It’s tempting to stand in awe of these achievements. But that shouldn’t obscure the fact that all of the student entrepreneurs we’ve just profiled got to where they are just by consuming a few renewable resources with unusual voracity, among them curiosity, empathy, collaboration, and the sheer desire to make a difference. They were all lucky to enjoy a few limited resources as well, and to stumble on genuine shortcoming in global healthcare, which inspired them to spend untold hours collecting the tools to “hack” through the technical and logistical obstacles that stood in their way.
Still hungry for guidance? Read about Strikingly’s own student startup origins as covered in Forbes, and check out this “how-to” guide to launching your own startup. The entrepreneurs we’ve covered may have an impressive head start, but with planning, persistence, and passion, the rest of us may have a chance to follow their lead.
