Vinuri De Silva BioDesign Competition 2022
The second BioDesign Competition has been named after Vinuri De Silva to acknowledge her lasting legacy to those around her.
Description
The program is designed and supported by the BioDesign Team of MBSI, which includes past alumni of BioDesign Innovation. The program further invites guests who present and mentor throughout the workshop sessions. The guests are mainly the lecturers and alumni of the BioDesign Innovation subject as well as other experts with relevant experience within the medtech space. In 2022, the program also aims to include industry seminars that will expand upon important elements of the workshops to provide expert introduction to the students.
Students, in teams of 5-6 consisting of a mixture of backgrounds, will be identifying an unmet clinical need through clinician & allied health engagement or their prior clinical exposure. They will follow this with validation of the problem and ideation & simple prototyping of a solution. Concurrently, the teams will build a business case for their product and demonstrate how they can bring their solution into clinical practice.
At the concluding pitch event, the teams will be competing for a $2,500 prize.
Program
5 workshops: the workshops take the participating students through the ideation, invention and implementation stages of the biodesign innovation process. The sessions consist of presentations and mentoring / Q&A by the lecturers and alumni of the BioDesign Innovation subject of The University of Melbourne.
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At each workshop, 2 presenters and 2 mentors present and take part in a Q&A session.
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The sessions consist of two 15 min presentations followed by 40 min of group based breakout room activities and are concluded by 20 minutes of Q&A with the mentors.
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4 industry seminars: the seminars will be provided by industry experts on specific important areas of biodesign innovation and medtech (e.g. IP law & patenting, regulations, design & prototyping, raising funds) which will provide detailed but applicable introduction to these areas to the students
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At each seminar, a 1-1.5 hour presentation and Q&A on a specific topic / area of medtech is provided by an industry expert.
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Pitch event: held in the last week of the program, consists of a 3-minute pitch by each team followed by 3 minutes of questions by the judging panel. The judging panel consists of experts from the medtech field.
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At the pitch event, 4 judges will be present and judge the pitch and Q&A performance of each team based on a specific set of criteria
