News

MedThru ICT (Alvin Lomibao,
Nick Lewandowski, Sarah
Catheline, Nirish Kafle)

Among the six University teams that have advanced to the New York Business Plan Competition finals, the Department of Biomedical Engineering has two teams vying for the top spot. The finalists include BME undergraduate team, TrakOR (W. Spencer Klubben, Ankit Medhekar, Michael Nolan, Sonja Page, Matt Plakosh, Erin Schnellinger) in the biotech/healthcare category and graduate team, MedThru ICT (Sarah Catheline, Nirish Kafle, Nick Lewandowski, Alvin Lomibao) in the information technology/software category.

Through the clinical rotations in the CMTI masters program, I was able to get a sense of a day in the life of staff members in the cardiac catheterization laboratory--how they interact with technology and medical devices, what they're really good at, and what frustrates them. In developing the MedThru ICT system, we've considered a number of these pain points and developed a way to facilitate resource management when critical decisions need to be made. This way, providers can really focus on the patient and not on logistics. We hope that downstream this system can have applications in other hospital units, decreasing the cost of healthcare overall, says Alvin Lomibao.

The finals will take place in Albany on April 26, where the two teams will vie for $225,000 in cash and in-kind prizes. The New York Business Plan Competition is the only leading collegiate business competition that is a regionally coordinated, collaborative statewide program, which sets it apart from all other competitions. It is one of the largest collegiate business competitions in the nation.

Five students at the University of Rochester have designed a tricycle control system that allows some people with disabilities to steer, brake and shift gears with one hand. The project is getting international recognition and is a finalist for a da Vinci Award this month. Martin Szeto is one of the students behind the MonoMano Cycling system. They worked under the guidance of Professors Laurel Carney and Amy Lerner at the U of R's Department of Biomedical Engineering.

MonoMano is a product of BME's esteemed Senior Design program, which introduces students to a systematic, customer-driven design and problem solving approach resulting in development of prototype medical devices or research instruments. Over the past 10 years, students have completed over 120 projects including clinical devices, assistive technology, and biomedical research instruments and protocols with MonoMano Cycling being the first student-founded corporation.

The the senior design program has had at least 7 winning entries in National Design competitions, 1 NY State Business Plan Competition, 3 winners in the Mark Ain Business Plan Competition and a ten-year track record of success at the Forbes Engineering Entrepreneurship Competition.