I love finding honew and exciting websites that deal with several different aspects of health care. I recently found this fantastic website dealing with diabetes: www.DiabetesMine.com
Since starting my own website regarding health care, medical informatics, blogging, and book reviews; I have been entranced by websites that are well put together.
To make things even better, I noticed that this website was holding a competition. It is called: The 2009 DiabetesMine™ Design Challenge and it all first began back in 2007. It was initially designed as an answer to a question that was posed by the writer of this website. It then expanded to a more creative and organized concept. Last years winners received $10,000 dollars. Second prize for the “most original” took home $5,000. A third winner in the category of best design by someone under 18 or “kids category” grabbed $2,000. This year the prizes are the same.
I was hooked the moment I read about this contest. And the amazing part, all that was required was, an “innovative new diabetes device or web application”. This competition isn’t necessarily asking
for a finished product but I am sure that would help improve your chances.
I read further and found that only a handful of participants were in the original competition. I felt my chances were pretty good!!
My idea isn’t spectacular but it would be useful and helpful for my goal of interaction with health care and diabetes. So I started to tackle some brain storming issues and how to get things into place.
It worked well and I came up with an idea for an animation to explain the process of diabetes in a way that would be beneficial for someone who had just learned of their diagnosis. I am trying to work with students from Brigham Young University and their animation department.
I entered the competition and the results just came in recently. I didn’t win. Often winning isn’t the most important thing for an entrepreneur but it certainly would have helped.
The amazing aspect is that over 150 teams entered the competition each with a design to improve diabetes health care and to win $10,000.
The winner for 2009 is LifeCase & LifeApp System. They designed an application that allows an iPhone to become an all encompassing glucometer and case with a controller for your pump built in.
It appears that this system could work for any smartphone.
This was definitely a great opportunity and more importantly a fantastic competition that allows a group of people to express their concepts and ideas.
Please take some time to take a look at all the concepts for this year at www.diabetesmine.com
My own entry can be found at the following: The Animation Dialogue
Unfortunately the competition has already been decided, at least for this year – but next year isn’t too far away and maybe you can be the next $10,000 winner!!!
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