A team of mechanical engineering students from the University of Cincinnati has won $10,000 to develop and bring to market a niche line of disposable medical devices for emergency departments.
The students, who are calling themselves Project Clear, were awarded the funds at Friday’s inaugural Student BioInnovation Summit at SparkHaus in Covington.
The product is essentially a disposable speculum. Project Clear hopes to direct the funding toward developing a functional prototype, testing it and then applying for FDA approval.
“We are a team of four female mechanical engineers, all incredibly passionate about the women’s health space,” said Lily Peters, one of the team members for Project Clear. “Together, we bring about eight years of combined co-op experience across product design, manufacturing and work within the medical device industry. We want to see this go as far as we can.”
The other members of Project Clear are Caroline Endres, Maggie Matuska and Kathryn Schoeny, all of whom are fifth-year engineering students at UC.
Emergency departments already employ disposable specula, but clinicians, the students said, currently rely largely on gauze and cotton swabs to clear excess fluid. Fluid secretion during pelvic exams can impede clinicians’ vision, making exams more difficult. To address this, Project Clear is pitching a new device that would employ an integrated basin and vacuum suction to collect excess fluid. It would also feature a comfortable handle and specialized lighting mechanism to make exams easier to perform.
“Even capturing just 10% of the U.S. emergency department market could generate $1 million in annual revenue,” said Endres. “And as the disposable speculum segment continues to grow, as clinics continually prioritize contamination control and reduce equipment reprocessing, we see an opportunity to expand beyond just emergency departments and into clinical OB/GYN settings.”
The summit was organized jointly by LifeSciKY, a local biotech incubator, and the University of Kentucky NKY College of Medicine. It aimed to introduce biotech careers and entrepreneurship to NKY high schoolers. Over 60 high school juniors and seniors from private, public and technical schools around the region attended the summit.
The summit lasted most of the day, but it culminated in a pitch contest that lasted about an hour. Six competitors (some groups, some individuals) from various higher ed institutions in the region and state pitched their product ideas to a group of judges, Shark Tank-style, who judged both the project itself and its market viability before deciding on a winner. BE NKY and BlueNorth contributed the prize funds.
Pitches included everything from genetic testing for early Alzheimer’s detection to an innovation on ostomy bags to machine learning technology for detecting vocal disorders, among others. In the end, the judges said, Project Clear had the clearest path to market.
“Their solution just seemed to have a niche, have a process, have a future and certainly captured a market that was well defined and easy to understand,” said Anthony Cadle, a judge representing BE NKY.
“It was a really competitive process to even be here,” LifeSciKY Executive Operations Fellow Gabriella Morehouse told all of the competitors. “So, we’re really proud of you all.”
In addition to the money, the Project Clear team will also receive consulting sessions from Ohio-based company Project Medtech and a free year-long membership for coworking space at SparkHaus.
