Newborn jaundice detection tool wins grand prize at University of Wash. health innovation challenge

A trio of students from the University of Washington won the grand prize at the UW’s Hollomon Health Innovation Challenge for their non-invasive jaundice-detecting technology.

“The whole motivation is we are saving lives,” said Tejoram Vivekanandan, tech lead for the startup Luminovah.

The challenge, Vivekanandan said, is that much of the current technology for identifying jaundice doesn’t do a good job recognizing the condition in babies with more melanin in their skin.

“It’s really hard to get a model working on all skin colors,” Vivekanandan said.

But his team has built a tool that should perform well on all skin tones. They’re currently finishing testing in animal models and partnering with Seattle Children’s to do human studies in pursuit of Food and Drug Administration approval.

They’ve spoken with neonatal healthcare providers and facilities, and say there’s a strong demand for their solution. The startup would also like to offer devices that can be rented by parents of newborns with the condition, which can cause brain damage if untreated.

“Our device is super special and really significant,” said Luminovah’s Lillian Tran.

The team’s third member is Nana Wang.

The startup won both the $15,000 Hollomon Family Grand Prize and the $2,500 Naturacur Wound Healing Best Idea for a Medical Device prize.

It’s not the first innovative UW-related project focused on identifying jaundice. More than a decade ago, researchers from the UW’s computer science school built a smartphone app to screen for the skin condition.

This was the 10th year of the competition and drew a record-setting 69 applicants from Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, Idaho and Alaska. Judges winnowed the field down to 22 student-created startups who made their pitches yesterday.

The competition was hosted by the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship in the Foster School of Business.

Other prize winners:

$10,000 WRF Capital Second Place Prize

This was a tie between two UW startups: General Molecular Electronics and VISTA.

• General Molecular Electronics is developing a genetic diagnostic for Lipoprotein(a), which is a less understood but significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Xavi Guitart is working on proprietary nanopore sequencing technology to test for the condition.

• VISTA is using computer vision technology to facilitate image-guided surgery. The startup team includes Nicole Gunderson, Pengcheng Chen and Jeremy Ruthberg.

$5,000 R1 Third Place Prize 

The University of Victoria’s Revyn Medical Technologies won this prize, and the $2,500 Population Health Initiative Best Idea for Addressing Health Access and Disparities Prize.

Revyn Medical Technologies is developing technology for gynecological exams with the goal of improving usability and effectiveness for providers while also prioritizing patient comfort and reducing anxiety. The team includes Keeley McCormick, Joshua Latimer, Zoe Crookshank, Samantha Sperling and Devon Carmichael.

Multiple past Hollomon competition winners have gone on to become commercial enterprises.

That includes Seattle biotech company A-Alpha Bio, which won first prize in 2018 and raised $20 million three years later, and 2019 first prize winner Nanodropper, which raised $1.4 million. Spira took home third place in 2020 and was acquired the following year by New York-based healthcare company Galileo for its software tool to enhance patient screening.