Moving digital healthcare and life science forward while immersing in experiential entrepreneurship training was the main agenda for the 2nd annual Healthcare Makerthon, an initiative by the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute and NYU School of Medicine. Nearly 200 faculty, researchers, students, and clinicians from across NYU came together to identify and develop solutions to the pressing challenges facing today's healthcare system.
The second phase of the initiative, held over November 18-20, 2016, was sponsored by Stryker, ETHICON, VentureWell, BioDigital and Medaptive Health.
NYU Healthcare Makerthon, a three-phased initiative, kicked off Phase I in September at the NYU Langone Medical Center with a Pitch Challenge to identify the pressing healthcare challenges experienced by front-line practitioners. In October, NYU community attended a team hunt to meet potential teammates interested in a particular solving the challenges.
For the mega-weekend event in November, participants ranging from physicians, nurses, physical therapist, developers, engineers, designers and business students worked feverishly over the 48+hours to come up with prototypes and business models. Teams were encouraged to leverage insight from customer discovery by “getting out of the building” and mentorship from industry experts. Participants impressed judges, sponsors, coaches, and organizing staff by flexing their clinical, technical and business skills.
Gina Bartasi, CEO of Progyny, a company that leverages science, technology and data to improve fertility outcomes, set the stage during her keynote on Friday night, expanding on her experiences and what she learned while building her startup. Her greatest lessons learned were:
- Continuous customer discovery
- Understand value proposition for each customer segment
- Validate or invalidate key assumptions constantly
- Gain traction/show proof of what works
- Work-life balance of an entrepreneur
Over the weekend, 12 teams formed around 11 pre-selected challenges, with 3-5 individuals to each team. The teams received coaching from 35 mentors (healthcare domain experts, prototyping and business model coaches), hands on technical support from engineers and product managers for Apple Research and Care Kit, BioDigital Human, and Medaptive Healthcare Solutions platform. The teams are:
CliniPing: Krystal Estiler (NYULMC), Grecian Zamora (SON), Sarah Nesheim (Communications), Krish Cheilavanda (Computer Science), Pierre Gong (Tandon)
Accumulab: Shadab Hassan (Tandon), Jai Rathore (Tandon), Mohammed Yaseen (Tandon)
Haemonix: Brandon Johnson (CS), Seth Perelman (NYULMC), Nick Zuyev (SON)
Levitas: Amar Seoparson (Tandon), Anthony Oganov (CS), Sai Chaluvadi (CS)
Virtuoso: Richard Sheng (Stern), Vivian Wang (Stern), Aysh Singhvi (Tandon), Mihcael Chiem (Stern)
RoutineDrop: Nashwa Khalil (NYULMC), Linda Ng (Stern), Nikita Trimbake (Tandon), Victoria Petrovsky (NYULMC)
Epicure: Daniel Motola (NYULMC), che-lun Juan (GSAS)
Cradle: Vidyadhar Thatte (CS), Victoria Spann-Burton (Tandon/Stern), Shaun Chua (Gallatin)
Find My Midwife: Katie Allen (NYULMC), Grace Lee (Tandon), Jumoke Opeyemi (CAS), Tommy Qiu (Tandon)
Physicaa: Raj Karia (NYULMC), Morgan Mingoue (NYULMC), Udit Modi (CAS), Louis Grelot (Stern)
Moving Science Forward: Steve Stork (NYULMC), Prag Batra (SOM), Edmund Tsui (NYULMC), Fanyuan Qui (Tandon), Kimberly Milner (Tandon)
Stryke Force: Devon Powell (Tandon), Earl Co (Media Labs), Guy Scroco (NYULMC), Benjamin Rizbin (Tandon), Paulami Roy (Tandon)
At the end of the intensive weekend of customer discovery and prototyping, four teams took home prizes cash prizes and ongoing support and mentorship to help them bring their prototypes to market. The teams are:
Epicure: Daniel Motola (NYULMC), Che-lun Juan (GSAS)
Levitas: Amar Seoparson (Tandon), Anthony Oganov (CS), Sai Chaluvadi (CS)
Physicaa: Raj Karia (NYULMC), Morgan Mingoue (NYULMC), Udit Modi (CAS), Louis Grelot (Stern)
Stryke Force: Devon Powell (Tandon), Earl Co (Media Labs), Guy Scroco (NYULMC) Benjamin Rizbin (Tandon), Paulami Roy (Tandon)
Six teams will move forward in Phase III of the initiative: Venture Creation Support. During the venture support phase, six teams will have an opportunity to research and develop the venture concept that was developed over the Makerthon Weekend. Their journey will kicked off on December 19 with a workshop on Value Proposition and Customer Development.
From January 11 to March 1, 2017, teams will receive coaching through the Entrepreneurial Institute and have access to lean startup and industry experts.
“We are very excited to work with the continuing six teams who’ve gotten the entrepreneurial bug from the weekend to explore sustainable solutions and business model to bring to market innovation to healthcare challenges” said Dee Dao, Venture Associate, NYU Innovation Venture Fund.
