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Life Science students

Innovation on a dime - Developing an innovative mindset

From a $1 Foldscope to a mobile application, the ideas are creative and innovative when Life Science students in Silicon Valley have to develop an innovative solution with a maximum cost of $10. Through mentoring and coaching they learn about innovation processes and are provided with necessary tools. Learn why Shomit Ghose, a venture capital legend in Silicon Valley started the $10 challenge. 

Imagine you had to come up with an innovative idea that can improve and perhaps even save people’s lives but only at a maximum cost of $10?

The $10 Challenge does exactly that. Life Science students use their resources and network to come up with an innovative solution that improves people’s life for a maximum cost of $10 per treatment.

This year one group of students has come up with an idea to diagnose Chagas disease by using a $1 Foldscope and a smartphone. It can quickly diagnose the disease, which is found mainly in Central and Southern America and infects 30,000 new patients each year. The Chagas disease is also one of the leading causes of premature cardiac death in Central and South America with over 10,000 deaths each year.

“Using already existing technologies in new ways and leveraging the power of AI in a smartphone is a very smart and scalable solution that could have such a substantial impact on millions of people around the world,” says Aleksander Lühr Hansen from the group that conceived the idea. Aleksander is DARE Fellow and studies at University of Copenhagen.

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Joining the $10 Challenge while conducting research at UCSF was a really valuable learning experience. It provided me with insight into how the innovation process works. After participating in the program, I am no longer hesitant to bring ideas to life.

Zacharias Duus Holm Student at Copenhagen and DARE fellow participating in $10 Challenge

The global annual costs of Chagas disease are estimated to be around $7 billion with a $4,660 cost per patient as this is a lifelong chronic disease. However, with early diagnosis and treatment the disease is almost 100% curable and the impact to the patient’s life and economy is significant.

A real-life learning experiences

The $10 challenge consists of six monthly meetups and gives the participants valuable input and coaching – experienced business leaders volunteer as mentors for the groups and provide input and feedback for the students to use as they develop their idea. At the meet-ups experts join to give lectures on relevant topics such as financing, patent law and other relevant topics, while the students also get the opportunity to ask questions related to their project directly.

Teams are created and deliberately composed of students with different backgrounds and focus areas – some are engineers, some designers while others come from the life science field. This diversity creates the ideal environment for creating out of the box thinking and novel solutions. The students – most of whom do not know each other prior to joining the $10 Challenge - work together and learn to leverage each other’s skills and strengths.

“Joining the $10 Challenge, while conducting research at UCSF, was a really valuable learning experience. It provided me with insight into how the innovation process works. After participating in the program, I am no longer hesitant to bring ideas to life.” Says one of the participants, Zacharias Duus Holm from University of Copenhagen and a DARE Fellow

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The learning process is by far what is most important in the $10 Challenge. The perspectives and input that you get from the other team members, mentors, and subject matter experts at our monthly meet-ups is something that I will use going forward.

Pernille Horsted Kjaer Student at Aalborg University and DARE fellow part of the group working with oral cancer screening tools

Oral cancer screening in India

Another $10 challenge group worked to improve health care delivery and access to effective screening tools to diagnose oral cancer in a broader population, targetting the vast rural Indian population where the prevalence is a staggering 65%. The team’s specific field of interest is the implementation of oral cancer screening in India aiming to reduce the high disease burden, morbidity, and mortality resulting from a lack of comprehensive screening.

The team utilized both global health resources at their respective universities as well as the entrepreneurial expertise from mentors in Silicon Valley to work with engineers and developers of deep learning screening algorithms in India. The goal was to develop a user-friendly mobile application that can be used by healthcare workers and/or community leaders throughout India. The team hopes that by bringing the screening tools directly to the communities most in need, they can eliminate the barriers that prevent adequate screening and thus early access to care. “The learning process is by far what is most important in the $10 Challenge,” says Pernille Horsted Kjaer from Aalborg University and a DARE Fellow, who worked on the oral cancer screening tool.

“The perspectives and input that you get from the other team members, mentors and subject matter experts at our monthly meet-ups is something that I will use going forward.”

Tools for the future

In 2019/20, a total of 35 students participated in the $10 Challenge and for the first time, a team from University of Los Andes in Colombia joined remotely.

The $10 Challenge is anchored at Innovation Center Denmark in Palo Alto, which also runs the DARE fellowship program. Initially it was the DARE Fellowship program that triggered the idea of the $10 Challenge; Five medical students from Denmark doing research at Stanford and UCSF universities for a year, funded by the Lundbeck Foundation. But Shomit believed the students should get the opportunity to experience innovation in Silicon Valley first-hand.

“The program aims to mirror the real-world innovation process as much as possible and gives the students a valuable experience that they may not get anywhere else. We try to expose the students to the thinking and creation process that is unique to Silicon Valley and give them tools that they can use in their future career,” says Shomit and continues “I have been amazed by some of the ideas and solutions that are created by the students – they are really top-notch and although they are conceived initially only as ideas in the program, I am certain that they could make a difference in the real world.”

In 2019 the $10 Challenge program was selected as a finalist in the prestigious AMEE annual award in medical teaching excellence. The Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) is a worldwide organization with members in 90 countries on five continents. AMEE promotes international excellence in education in the health professions across the continuum of undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education.

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We're not reinventing the wheel, we're just using tools that are already out there.

Alexander Lühr Hansen Student at University of Copenhagen and DARE fellow part of the group working with Chagas disease

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