Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/662005
t m c » p u l s e | a p r i l 2 0 1 6 13 The products aimed at improving care for the country's newest and youngest patients ranged from a voice-translation tool to help those with speech impediments and a screening software for child development, to an avatar-based nurse to help manage chronic conditions and a stabilization device for neo- natal umbilical catheters. But it was New York-based Cohero Health's asthma medication management platform that won over the judges and walked away with the $50,000 first-place prize, while TMCx alum Noninvasix, which was originally slated as an alternate finalist, came in second with its unique monitoring system for reducing cases of oxygen deprivation in infants. "We are thrilled with the outcome of the compe- tition," said Noninvasix CEO Graham Randall, Ph.D. "Bragging rights are great, but I think the biggest impact for the company from the competition will come from the connections we've made. We now have connections to the top children's hospitals in the country, and, after the competition, several of the judges asked how they could help Noninvasix." Eager to make sure his work was meaningful and impactful, Randall left Silicon Valley 15 years ago to earn his Ph.D. in biosciences from Baylor College of Medicine in an effort to develop new life sciences solutions for unmet needs in pediatric health and collaborate with like-minded and equally passionate individuals. "I expect that most entrepreneurs in life sciences are driven by a desire to do good, by either improv- ing patient outcomes or creating new efficiencies in the system," Randall said. "Health care is the biggest economic problem in the country right now. We need entrepreneurs working on creative new solutions that will allow us to get spending under control, without compromising outcomes." Ultimately, collaboration across the spectrum of tracks and industries is at the heart of SXSW. Erik Halvorsen, Ph.D., director of the TMC Innovation The Right Place CEO Katherine Chambers, left, and TMCx Business Strategist Sandeep Burugupalli In a system where the focus tends to be on adult health care and innovation, the ability to support those companies willing and interested in focusing on advances in pediatrics is crucial. — JENNIFER ARNOLD, M.D. Medical Director of the Pediatric Simulation Center at Texas Children's Hospital Institute, said although exposure to other health care companies is vital to startup growth, creating mean- ingful interactions outside of health care to draw inspi- ration from and apply to their own ideas is critical. "One of the secrets to effective innovation, and you see this across different industries, is when you find somebody doing something cool in an unrelated field, like in film or music or design, and you have that 'Oh, wow' moment, and think, 'I could totally apply that to my digital health product or medical device,'" Halvorsen said. "When you find those gems, new connections that arise as the unintended consequences of chance meet- ings and discussions, that's when the magic happens," he added. "People are trying to solve for some signif- icant problems in health care, and they can easily get into the weeds with all the complexity, but if they step outside their comfort zones and explore what's going on in unrelated fields like energy, entertainment, architecture and the arts, they might just find some- thing useful and unanticipated that turns out to be a real game changer." Whether it's coming up with innovative solutions to help people better navigate health policy, improve patient safety, mitigate the research translation problem or develop new medical devices that improve patient outcomes, the display of talent at this year's SXSW Interactive proved that entrepreneurs, engi- neers and scientists have unparalleled ability to shape the future of health care through collaboration. "I think the Texas Medical Center has a tremen- dous role to play in all of these problems, but the com- mon element [...] is that there are many opportunities for people who write software or for people who make hardware or for people who do technology in general to have huge impacts," said CareSet co-founder and hacktivist Fred Trotter. "You can make a relatively small impact, relative to the whole problem, on any one of those problems, and you can save tens of thou- sands of lives. You can change hundreds of thousands of lives for the better."