GOOD

Humera Fasihuddin

Druv Boddupalli, a second-year medical student at Stanford, is a finalist in the NCIIA's national student biomedical engineering competition, BMEidea. Boddupalli spoke yesterday to his fellow finalists at a celebratory luncheon: "I'm an activist. I want to do good. I want to help the world's most poor and disenfranchised." He was discussing his team, OneBreath, and the low-cost ventilator they have designed for use in developing nations and large-scale disasters.

This is an attitude shared by Boddupalli’s fellow finalists. The desire to use technology to help people and to tackle difficult problems pervades BMEidea each year. Some teams, like OneBreath, focus their energies on the developing world. Others, like the Rapid Hypothermia Inducing Device team from Johns Hopkins, set their sights on health technologies that need to be improved closer to home. Still others, such as Cincinnati’s NOVEL team, turn their attention to hot-button issues like maternal health—relevant both here in the U.S. and abroad.

These three teams were selected from a pool of nearly fifty applicants to attend the annual Medical Design and Manufacturing (MD&M) East Conference in New York City. This morning we proudly recognized the top three biomedical innovators. They are, in order:



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