A team from Carle Illinois College of Medicine’s (CI MED) biomedical pre-incubation program AxisMED earned top honors at The Grainger College of Engineering’s Startup Showcase at Engineering Open House.
Written by Libby Knight
A team from Carle Illinois College of Medicine’s (CI MED) biomedical pre-incubation program AxisMED earned top honors at The Grainger College of Engineering’s Startup Showcase at Engineering Open House.
The Startup Showcase, sponsored by iVenture Accelerator, celebrates student entrepreneurs. The event includes a pitch competition, where the more than 20 teams pitched ideas they’ve been working on in a rapid-fire session.
First place went to Neuronetix, an AxisMED team working on a device to quantify a concussion diagnosis. The team includes CI MED first-year students Neddie Byron and Alexa Lauinger and undergraduate student Adrianna Ramos, a junior in biochemistry.
“The problem right now is that most of concussion diagnosis involves self-reporting symptoms – so right in that moment how are you feeling – and this is a particular problem for athletes because they want to get back into the game,” said Byron. “They don’t want to have to sit out for a certain amount of time, so they tend to downplay their symptoms.”
A common protocol for concussion treatment and diagnosis is a system called the ImPACT test, a baseline cognitive exam. Athletes take a baseline test at the beginning of a season and if they suffer a head injury, they take the test again to see whether there is cognitive impairment.
“The number of people we’ve talked to that have said that ‘yeah I know people that purposely did poorly on the baseline’, so that if they had a head injury, they’d look fine, is astounding. We are looking to overcome that issue with this quantifiable test,”Byron said.
Neuronetix’s solution is to create a metric using a blood test to determine fast and accurately whether a concussion has occurred. “We are going to be using a tool similar to a blood glucose monitor for diabetics in which you will take a simple finger prick, put it in the meter and it will read your blood for protein levels and determine whether you have a concussion or not,” said Ramos. “The opportunities of this solution are huge because this can go from the recreational level all the way up to pro sports levels.”
Byron stressed that the risks of a concussion going undiagnosed and then an athlete to sustain a second hit are life-threatening. “You have worse symptoms, longer recovery, it truly is a huge impact on your life and your recovery,” Byron added. “We want to remove the opportunity for that to happen.”
Along with the first-place trophy, the team also received a $750 cash prize, which will go to funding rent for a lab space and starting their much-anticipated prototyping.
“The positive feedback we received from the judges, our peers, and the community also gave us encouragement to continue moving forward with the project,” said Byron.
AxisMED’s VOCA Health, also participated in the competition with its objective measurement platform designed to help users track and manage voice health over time regularly or upon onset of newly diagnosed voice disorder. The team is led by second-year med students Shreya Rangarajan and Michael Chen, former engineering team leader Bhargav Chandaka, and UIUC undergraduate engineering student Deepak Nair.
VOCA is set to advance vocal assessment techniques, based on an objective measure of voice quality that can be captured from virtually anywhere, without requiring an invasive procedure. Current assessment for patients with suspected voice disorders is based on subjective evaluations that often require several steps. It starts with a self-assessment but then can advance to medical assessment including a laryngoscopy. This invasive procedure can be painful and must be done in a doctor’s office.
“Essentially the main problem that we identified was that a lot of the vocal metrics are actually very subjective,” said Rangarajan. “Usually, you would go to your health care professional, usually an ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) physician or a speech and language pathologist; they’ll give you a sheet of paper saying ‘okay, how would you identify your voice today,’ so very subjective. We’re looking at shifting the gears a little bit and looking at objective data as opposed to subjective. We’re hoping to standardize how vocal health is treated over time.”
Along with shifting gears from subjective to objective measurement, Rangarajan hopes VOCA will have impacts in reducing the barrier between the patient and the clinician, especially those in rural health areas.
“This could also benefit many, many people, so not only singers, but teachers, newscasters, pretty much anyone who uses their voice for a living. If you’re using your voice over time a lot, this can be a way to track [your voice health].”
To read more about VOCA Health, click HERE.
AxisMED is a biomedical pre-incubation program intended to fill the gaps between a university’s academic resources and entrepreneurial accelerator programs by connecting students through interdisciplinary teams and the tools necessary to navigate early-stage medical ventures. AxisMED’s program strengthens the University of Illinois’ existing entrepreneurship ecosystem by establishing a new, accessible entry point for students to gain experience in medical entrepreneurship and innovation before pursuing further acceleration.