[October 21, 2014]

Henry Ford Innovation Institute Announces Winners in Digital Health Challenge

A system designed to record and encourage movement of hospital patients; a recovery tool for total hip replacement; and a monitoring system for night time low blood sugar were the three technologies named as winners in the Davidson Digital Health Challenge, organized by Henry Ford Innovation Institute.

Thirty teams of employees from Henry Ford Health System and Health Alliance Plan participated in the challenge, submitting ideas for applications wearable sensor technology that could improve outcomes, lower costs and increase patient engagement across the continuum of care.

Ten semi-finalists were selected to take part in a two-session entrepreneurship education curriculum, with five finalists chosen to pitch for $10,000 in total prize money.

The three winners from this year's challenge were:

Grand Prize: Acute Care Mobility - Gwen Gnam, RN, MSN, and Dr. Ilan Rubinfeld

Inpatient mobility has been shown to be highly correlated with how well and how quickly patients recover from their hospital stay. However, the current method for tracking how often and how much patients are getting up and moving is very cumbersome and doesn't allow nurses to identify who needs to move more. Dr. Ilan Rubinfeld and Gwen Gnam, RN, MSN, looked to solve that problem by creating a system that uses activity monitors to track patient movement, with an easy to use interface that allows nurses to identify patients that need to move around, track their progress, and motivate them to get moving.

Second Prize: MiROM - Dr. Robert Keller and Dr. Nicholas Frisch

Dislocation after total hip replacement is one of the iggest drivers of readmission, leading to major avoidable costs. Current methods for preventing dislocation are expensive and cumbersome. MiROM promises a new alternative, using wearable sensors and smartphone technology to limit range of motion and encourage healthy recovery.

Third Prize: Sweet Dreams - Dr. Suraj Raheja

For patients with diabetes, monitoring and maintaining proper blood sugar at night is a significant challenge. Current monitoring devices for nocturnal hypoglycemia, an event when a patient's blood sugar drastically drops overnight, can be cumbersome and subject patients to possible pain, bleeding, infection and recurring costs. To solve this, Sweet Dreams uses wearable sensor to detect the vital signs associated with low blood sugar and alerts the patient, waking them up so they can address the problem.

The challenge was made possible with the generous support of the William Davidson Foundation through the newly created Davidson Center for Entrepreneurs in Digital Health. The center seeks to train top talent in the Detroit area to become leaders in the field of digital health and to accelerate the development of next generation healthcare technologies.

"The demand for innovation in healthcare is greater than in any other industry in the country right now," says Scott Dulchavsky, M.D., Ph.D., CEO of the Henry Ford Innovation Institute. "The Davidson Fellowship not only offers a unique opportunity for personal development among the participants, but also serves as a catalyst for finding solutions to some of our biggest unsolved healthcare problems."

About Henry Ford Innovation Institute

The Henry Ford Innovation Institute is the flagship program of Henry Ford Health System's commitment to innovation. The enables research, training, and commercialization opportunities across Henry Ford Health System, and is part of the larger Innovations unit. It provides Henry Ford employees access to an array of intellectual and asset-related resources and programs that include technological opportunity assessment, engineering services for prototypes, seminars designed to convey opportunities, programs aimed at developing specific medical products and broad educational offerings in the realms of translational medicine and the entrepreneurial arts.

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