Mount Sinai Hosts Innovation Showcase Featuring SinaInnovations Health Hackathon Finalists

The Mount Sinai Innovation Showcase, held on February 14, 2019 in the Davis Auditorium, set the scene for young innovators from Mount Sinai, SUNY Stony Brook, and Cooper Union to share their ideas on how to benefit the patient population.

Hosted by Mount Sinai Innovation Partners (MSIP) with support from the SinaInnovations Committee and the Institutes for Translational Sciences (ConduITS), the Showcase included 5-minute pitch presentations from the three Health Hackathon finalist teams and one wild card entry to a panel of entrepreneurs, investors and accelerators from the NYC life science ecosystem. After creating their solutions to address rare diseases at the Hackathon in October 2018, the teams received coaching from MSIP and mentoring program eLabNYC. The teams discovered how to merge product development with business strategy and improve their product based on consumer needs. This prepared the innovators to present targeted concepts that grew from early stage ideas. The event reinforced Mount Sinai’s mission to provide exceptional patient care and clinical leadership by cultivating innovation through research. Mount Sinai engages MSIP to translate discoveries into products or services that benefit patients.

The teams included: Eye Can Do, a smartphone-based eye tracking technology for immobile patients; Walk Thru, a portable accessory for patients using a walker to facilitate getting through doors; Demeter, a smartphone application that provides diet tracking, management, and symptom assessment for patients of metabolic disorders; and Dormi, a tracking device to assess and monitor sleep patterns.

The presentations received feedback from a panel of experts in the science and business fields, including: Jim Heitner, Associate Director of the Mount Sinai i3 Accelerator, Nishta Rao, Director of Princeton Innovation Center BioLabs; John Hammitt, Executive Director of HITLAB Healthcare Innovation Lab, Sarah Barrington, CEO of Cynvenio Biosystems Inc., Sean Ianchulev, Director of the Ophthalmic Innovation and Technology Program at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, and Brent Stackhouse, Vice President of Mount Sinai Ambulatory Ventures. The audience, ranging from faculty, graduate students, fellow innovators and more, interacted with the teams and judges at the networking reception that followed.

The teams are pursuing next steps by improving prototypes, initiating clinical studies, and continuing to work with MSIP.