A PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN AND CARLE HEALTH
May 1, 2022

Carle Illinois students’ medical innovation start-ups win $50k in campus competition

  • By Beth Hart

Start-ups powered by students at Carle Illinois College of Medicine to tackle health problems like monitoring for iron deficiency and kidney disease have won more than $50,000 in investment funding as part of a campus-wide innovation competition. Carle Illinois students are represented on two teams — Ferritiva and Nephra — that tied for second place in the COZAD New Venture Challenge, a campus-wide competition in which student start-ups bid for cash and in-kind support to […]

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AirCleanOR
March 23, 2022

Carle Illinois student team invents surgical smoke evacuator to increase surgical safety for patients and clinicians

  • By Beth Hart

A new Carle Illinois College of Medicine student innovation is set to make mouth and throat surgeries safer by clearing the air of potentially hazardous surgical smoke. The device, AirCleanOR, is an oral cavity smoke evacuator designed for use in procedures like tonsillectomies, in which tissues must be cauterized, producing smoke that contains toxic and cancer-causing materials. Research shows daily surgical smoke exposure is as harmful as smoking dozens of cigarettes, making it a health […]

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Capstone Innovation header
March 8, 2022

Student Innovation Trains Future Clinicians to Safely, Effectively Intubate Patients

  • By Beth Hart

A new device developed by two Carle Illinois College of Medicine students is set to help other medical students safely master a common lifesaving but difficult-to-learn medical procedure. The team’s innovation improves on the design of manikin simulators used in medical education, to teach the skill of intubation – insertion of a breathing tube into a patient’s airway to maintain oxygen flow when the airway is blocked or when the patient is undergoing surgery. Proper […]

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December 23, 2021

Carle Illinois Students Collaborate to Innovate Kidney Disease Monitoring System and Launch Rising Startup

  • By Beth Hart

Student-led venture Nephra has been named one of the Most Disruptive Business School Startups of 2021 by Poets & Quants. The start-up has collaborated with AxisMED, a pre-incubator program founded by Carle Illinois College of Medicine students including Al Smith (Class of 2024) and Ethan Chen (Class of 2022). AxisMED co-founder Smith serves as Nephra’s medical officer. Chen is Nephra’s health consultant.  _ Nephra, a student-led startup supported by iVenture Accelerator, has also moved into the second […]

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Dean King Li selected as Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors
December 7, 2021

National Academy of Inventors announces Carle Illinois’ Dean King Li as 2021 NAI Fellow

  • By Beth Hart

Carle Illinois College of Medicine’s Dean King Li has been elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the highest professional distinction awarded exclusively to academic inventors. Election to NAI Fellow status is bestowed solely to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and welfare of society. “Dean Li is most deserving […]

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September 9, 2021

Health Innovation Professor Bruce Fouke’s research featured in Scientific American September Issue

  • By Ryann Monahan

Carle Illinois College of Medicine Health Innovation Professor Bruce Fouke is offering a unique perspective on how biomineralization impacts health and disease in the Scientific American September 2021 Issue. The article “New Tool Shows Geology behind Kidney Stone Crystallization,” highlights Fouke’s discovery that kidney stones form similarly to many other stones in nature: they partially dissolve and re-form many times rather than crystallizing all at once. “That’s when we realized that stones are quite dynamic […]

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PillSafe Prototype and Health Maker Lab Medal
August 30, 2021

Health Make-a-Thon Winner Targets Opioid Addiction Prevention with New Device Prototypes

  • By Beth Hart

A Carle Illinois College of Medicine Health Make-a-Thon winner is closer to helping prevent opioid addiction with a unique pill bottle cap designed to monitor potential misuse of the medication. Ariana Alam Mizan was a 16-year-old University Lab High School student when she entered and won the September 2020 Health Make-a-Thon. Her award-winning pill bottle cap design is now taking shape in the Health Maker Lab at Carle Illinois. She has two working prototypes for […]

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June 1, 2021

New microscope discovery combines AI to detect disease earlier, improve treatment

  • By Ryann Monahan

A newly developed laser source and microscope are helping researchers better understand and search for biomarkers indicative of cancer and other diseases, offering new promise for early detection and treatment plans. The study, co-authored by Carle Illinois College of Medicine professors Stephen Boppart and Saurabh Sinha, including researchers in Boppart’s Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was recently published in Cancer Research and featured on the cover. The innovative laser source and […]

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May 9, 2021

Achievement in Absence of Graduation

  • By Ryann Monahan

There will be no walking across a graduation stage or turning tassels for Carle Illinois College of Medicine students this May. Instead, the inaugural class of the world’s first engineering-based college of medicine has one more year to prepare for the historic moment when they become newly-minded physician innovators with a medical degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. However, you don’t need to look far to find impressive accomplishments among Carle Illinois students. Innovation […]

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April 20, 2021

IDEA Symposium highlights Carle Illinois students’ innovative solutions

  • By Ryann Monahan

The Carle Illinois College of Medicine IDEA Symposium features students’ innovative ideas to combine medicine and engineering to find solutions to problems in and transform healthcare. Carle Illinois’ IDEA Projects allow medical students to harness their peak creativity through Innovation, Design, Engineering, and Analysis (IDEA) projects. The students generate new ideas to improve health care challenges during each clinical clerkship. The first annual IDEA Symposium was held April 15, 2021. A recap of the event […]

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