Champaign, IL –– Health care innovators and educators from around the world kick-started their quest to change the future of medicine and medical education at the first Global Summit of the Global Consortium on Innovation and Engineering in Medicine. The summit – hosted by Carle Illinois College of Medicine – brought together medical educators, entrepreneurs, industry and government leaders, and future medical innovators on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus to collaborate on tangible advances to health care education and delivery across the globe. The event highlighted the work of engineers and physicians-in-training to prototype new solutions to revolutionize patient care.
“This is an incredible landmark event for Illinois and the world and is the next big idea in transforming medical education, innovation, and health care delivery through the intersection of engineering, medicine, artificial intelligence, and technology,” said CI MED Dean and Consortium Executive Council President Mark Cohen.
The Summit featured the Global Health Innovation Grand Challenge Pitch competition to showcase groundbreaking solutions to real-world health problems. Teams of medical students and engineering students focused on innovations around four central themes: AI applications to improve outcomes in rural health or underserved areas globally; solutions that improve early disease detection of chronic conditions; slowing or reversing disease progression in aging populations; and low-cost diagnostics, devices, or therapeutic solutions that can have global scalability. The top student teams were awarded funding to pilot and validate their solutions across the Consortium’s new global network of medical schools and hospitals, with insights and guidance from industry and regulatory agencies.
CI MED student Ameek Bindra, whose team Menopatch won first place in the pitch competition, says she’s grateful for this opportunity to contribute an innovation that can advance women’s health. “Women’s health is something that needs so much more innovating and research, and now we have the resources and funding that allows us to fuel our innovation,” Bindra said.
Winning Team Innovations:
1st Place, $75,000 award – Menopatch, Carle Illinois College of Medicine
Menopatch is a special patch designed to treat menopause symptoms by delivering hormone treatments through the skin. The patch is designed to deliver personalized doses of hormone replacement therapy for up to 30 days.
Team members: Ameek Bindra, Hamna Khalid, Jennifer Cochand, Hyukin Moon, Adam Szemerata; Kamryn Abraskin; Megha Guggari; Kush Sarin.
2nd Place, $60,000 award – Atlas, Carle Illinois College of Medicine
Atlas is a neurosurgical navigation device for use in rural and underserved settings to treat traumatic brain injury. Atlas’ guidance system enables non-specialist medical personnel to stabilize critically ill patients with fluid build-up on the brain until they can be transported to advanced care centers. The system can use either CT scans or MRI images coupled with the team’s specially designed software for mapping the best trajectory and the device’s robotic arm to ensure safe, effective external ventricular drain placement.
Team members: Alexander Smith; Samarth Gupta; Prateek Dullur
3rd Place, $50,000 award – Cervicare, Carle Illinois College of Medicine/University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Cervicare is aimed at improving the diagnosis of cervical cancer by offering reliable screening at home. The team’s tampon-like self-collection kit improves on the traditional pap smear by allowing patients to more comfortably collect the necessary samples at home or in the doctor’s office. Samples would be sent to a lab for analysis, but the team’s plans include the development of a lateral flow assay test that could more quickly detect biomarkers for cervical cancer.
Team members: Nellie Haug; Nama Naseem; Grace Brolly; Bhargavee Gnana; Modan Goldman; Abby Kostolansky; Matt Raab; Linh Pham
4th Place, $40,000 award – Ferritiva, Carle Illinois College of Medicine
Ferritiva is an at-home screening and monitoring test for iron deficiency as a convenient alternative to blood testing. The team’s solution would analyze a small sample of the patient’s urine to detect biomarkers for iron deficiency. Results would be available within 15 minutes, allowing at-home screening and monitoring for patients who are at risk for this common form of anemia.
Team members: Jeffrey Lu; Eben Lee; Rachael Wong; Matt Dusza; George Polovin; Vishnu Shastry; Siddarth Nataranajan
5th Place, $25,000 award - EIS-AI, National Yang-Ming Chiao-Tung University (NYCU), Taiwan
EIS-AI is designed to enhance ureter protection during robotic surgery in the pelvis. Ureter injury is a common surgical error. The team’s system incorporates a special sensor that detects when the ureters are contacted during surgery and alerts the surgical team, preventing injury. The team’s AI-based solution also has application to other high-risk or error-prone surgeries and for surgical training.
Team members: Yu-Ching Chen; Min-Hong Lu; Li-Wei Chen; Jun-Yu Lin
Finalists Teams:
Fund-a-scope - An ultra-low-cost fungus camera for rural eye care
Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine - NTU, Singapore
Team members: Pang Rei Ern Jaime; Matthew Tham Yong’an; Shua Yu Le Irving
NeuroGuard - A nerve-detecting surgical device for safer procedures
Carle Illinois College of Medicine
Team members: Nikita Chigullapally; Meenakshi Singhal; Prateek Dullur; Nicolas Kelhofer; Kyung Seol; Tamanna Dhore
Pelivitech3 - Increasing accessibility and changing the stigma around Kegel exercises for the prevention of urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction
University of Louisville School of Medicine
Team members: Emily Haleman, Iona Palmer, Nia Bard; Theresa Weis
Unicorn - Ultra-sensitive novel intelligent cardiovascular observation for real-time diagnostic
Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine - NTU, Singapore
Team members: Zhuang Lingyi; Chloe Alexandria Lim Shi Ann; Joshua Jebaraj Raymond; Low Rae-Yin Clarice; Voo Jia Yi
Integrating ICG Fluorescence and AI - A real-time guidance system for safer laparoscopic cholecystectomy
Carle Illinois College of Medicine
Team members: Fumihiro Kawano; Kathryn Tsai; Daniel Cheah; Helen Kemprecos; Megan Lim; Claudius Conrad
“Through partnerships and collaborations in the global consortium, we are advancing the future of medical education, connecting people and data from around the world to advance medical research, and breaking down barriers to advancing and scaling medical innovations for the benefit of society,” Cohen said.
Keynote speakers for the three-day event included Dr. Jim Weinstein, Senior Vice President of Microsoft Healthcare, Dr. Adil Hussain Haider, Dean of the AKU Medical College in Pakistan, and Professor Maryellen Giger, the A.N. Pritzker Distinguished Service Professor of Radiology at the University of Chicago.
The 2026 Global Summit will be held at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) in Taipei, Taiwan.
The new Global Consortium of Innovation and Engineering in Medicine is an international public-private-government collaborative that aims to accelerate the development of innovative solutions that impact human health by leveraging expertise from across disciplines and geographic boundaries. Learn more here.