Newswise — CIMIT is announcing a dynamic new engineering prize competition: the CIMIT Prize for Primary Healthcare. The top three entrants will receive $150,000, $100,000 and $50,000, respectively, to help advance their winning clinically-relevant, primary care solutions.
This national competition is open to graduate and undergraduate engineering students from accredited engineering programs, and is designed to encourage development of technological innovations in the frontlines of care. Contest participants will begin with a letter of intent, putting forward the basic goal of the planned effort. Up to 10 finalists will then be chosen by CIMIT to continue. Each of those 10 will be provided with $10,000 to fund expenses for developing their idea into a full entry. Letters of intent will be accepted after Dec. 1, and will be due Jan. 15, 2009. Finalist will be named Feb. 9. The 10 final proposals will be due May 31, and announcement of the three winners will be made June 30.
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. Technologies of particular interest are those which promise improved 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. 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.
CIMIT is the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology. A non-profit consortium of Boston-area teaching hospitals and engineering schools, CIMIT provides innovators with resources to explore, develop and implement novel technological solutions for today's most urgent healthcare problems. Participants in the consortium are Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Medical Center, Boston University, Brigham and Women's Hospital, the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Partners HealthCare and VA Boston Healthcare System. More information about the CIMIT Prize and entry procedures can be found at http://www.cimit.org.
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