Student’s sleep solution would create big box kiosk for DIY diagnostics

A group of pharmacy students from the University of Cincinnati won $1,000 for their medication adherence app idea.

Students from universities around Cincinnati pitched ideas for everything from lip balm to liver enzymes at Friday’s Innov8 for Health Idea Expo in Cincinnati. Eight teams presented and four won $1,000 to move to the next step of building a business plan.
Here are the four winning teams. Solving the Sleep Puzzle – This was the best idea of the student group from Jordan Hildebrandt from the University of Cincinnati. She proposed an easier way to diagnosis sleep problems: kiosks in big box stores, a basic assessment and an at-home sleep test.
“The initial diagnostic will recommend products in the store or direct the person to the pharmacist,” Hildebrandt said. “The pharmacist would then administer an at-home sleep test in the form of a bracelet for the wrist.”
She would design the kiosk, the in-store diagnostic and the at-home test.
The Ultimate Lip Balm – Joseph Frith of Miami University pitched a over-the-counter product for an entirely different problem: sensitive lips. His SPF 50 lip balm is designed for people with sensitive skin due to chemo or acne treatments. Last summer he developed his own product and is currently on his second batch. He is working with Raining Rose in Cedar Rapids, IA, to produce the balm and with GA Communication Group in Chicago to market it. Frith is looking for funding to pay for UVA and UVB testing.
Below Zero – Apparently drunk people take up an extraordinary amount of ER resources. Jacob Howard of the college of Mount Saint Joseph has a solution: liver enzymes injected into the blood stream. This would speed up the processing of alcohol out of the body.
“This could be in pill form or in an IV,” he said. “The pill could be sold retail in WalMart or at a bar.”
While this sounds like a great idea, I must say that only a college student could deliver the line “So if they were going to drink and drive anyway…” with a straight face.
Pharmacy Compliance App – This HIPPA compliant app would include dose reminders, a health log and a real time connection with the pharmacy. If a patient delayed or dismissed too many doses, the pharmacist would get an alert. Scanning a QR code on the bottle would link a prescription to the app. A team from the pharmacy school at the University of Cincinnati pitched this idea.
One idea that didn’t win but is worth mentioning was an urban cooking school. A man who had been on Fox’s Master Chef proposed a cooking school in Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine neighborhood. The chef suggested three components to the program: classes, a cafe where diners could watch live demos, and a web site to reach a broader audience. The idea is the next needed step after solving the food desert problem.