AR Conductor Healthcare Innovation Sprint
The winning team, Uroglo, included Nadia Amidu, Carol Morris, and Sudip Panday.
Uroglo won the $2,500 prize for the best tech-enabled patient safety solution at this year’s Healthcare Innovation Sprint. The prize was sponsored by the Patient Safety Technology Challenge, funded by the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative.
TheHealthcare Innovation Sprint, cohosted by The Conductor, Arkansas IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellent (INBRE), Conway Regional Health System, University of Central Arkansas, and BioVentures, took place at the University of Central Arkansas campus. The competition guided students through a four-day training program, May 15th through the 18th, where they learned about healthcare innovation and patient safety.
”The Patient Safety Tech partnership was a remarkable experience, shedding light on overlooked patient safety challenges. The synergy of health care, patient safety awareness, and entrepreneurship will propel us to new heights, shaping a future of safer, more compassionate care,” said Ericka Gutierrez, program manager at AR Conductor.
The finale was a demo night where students pitched their innovative tech-enabled patient safety solutions to a panel of five judges which included Dr. Fuchiang (Rich) Tsui, director of Tsui Laboratory and endowed Chair in Biomedical Informatics and Entrepreneurial Science at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute.
The winning team, Uroglo, included Nadia Amidu, Carol Morris, and Sudip Panday. Uroglo focuses on the early detection of catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), a persistent harm facing patients. Their novel solution is coating the inside of urine collection bags with a hydrogel infused with bacteriophages that will glow under UV when harmful bacteria that cause CAUTI are identified.
Carol Morris, a biomedical sciences PhD student, worked in a urology clinic and saw how common and dangerous CAUTIs remain. She said, “This gave me the idea to try and identify UTIs as early as they occur so that the patient can be treated faster, reducing the risk of urosepsis, and possibly saving lives. My idea would identify bacterial infection immediately, so you don't have to wait on the patient to develop symptoms. This is especially important because some immunocompromised patients never develop symptoms at all.”
Two team members understand how common CAUTI are from personal experience. Sudip Panday, a biomedical informatics graduate student, shared his personal connection to this common harm. His sister had a urinary catheter placed. He recounted, “She got infected later and we had to stay extra one week because of that infection. I believe she got infected because of poor hygiene and hospital conditions, and it took 3-4 days for diagnosis that it was urinary tract infection. I wished we knew it earlier and she was treated early.” His experience demonstrates the potential value of Uroglo’s ability to detect UTI’s before patients exhibit symptoms.
Morris also shared a personal experience that propelled the idea.
“My niece was born with a rare mitochondrial disorder, and she passed after her first year of life. She spent much of that year in the hospital where she contracted many catheter-associated UTIs which complicated her situation. Her healthcare providers treated us like family and took great care of her but still, she could not be spared from these infections. We would like to assist healthcare providers in making accurate diagnoses, faster, for the benefit of them, their patients, and their patients' families.”