Business Plan Competition Winner Has Strong Health Care Pull
And the winner is...NIR Diagnostics
The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia awarded the student team from NIR Diagnostics, whose patented InfraVue device detects wound healing more accurately than current approaches, the $20,000 Michelson Grand Prize in this year's Wharton Business Plan Competition (WBPC) (http://bpc.wharton.upenn.edu/).
In its 11th year, the WBPC is among the most recognized and respected university-led business plan competitions.
This year, an audience of hundreds of attendees listened to presentations and then brief elevator pitches from the finalists and voted on the winner. NIR also received a $3,000 prize for the "People's Choice award," based on the attendees votes. NIR Diagnostics' advisors range from a 2001 WBPC grand prize winner to the chief of vascular surgery at Philadelphia's Drexel University's College of Medicine. Also, members of the NIR Diagnostics team include a past WBPC finalist who was also selected to the Wharton Venture Initiation program, Wharton's educational/business incubator.
This year's Venture Finalists included the following participants from the medical/health/life sciences fields: NIR Diagnostics; DocAsap, an online medical appointment scheduling service; RealisticEye, which develops an enhanced appearance prosthetic eye by making the static pupil appear to dilate; Remote Integrated Monitoring Solutions for remote monitoring of diabetics in their homes.
The other finalists: Cuddlebots, a robotic toy company; Myvideoport, an online platform and marketplace for professional movie creators and content providers; PayDivvy, a financial technology company that provides collective payment and finance services for roommates; and StealthRowing, which develops a convertible pair/double sectional rowing shell.
The 2009 BPC winners were:
Health care/medical semi-finalists included: Gaya Technologies, which uses established methods of telemedicine, digital data transmission, networking and videoconferencing to solve health care supply chain and demand mismatches in developing countries; MedVolution, a technology health care startup, launched last year and the 2008 Wharton Venture Award recipient. The company's software improves medical diagnostic accuracy through sophisticated algorithms to improve decision-making.
NeuroStim Technologies is an early stage medical therapy company focused on electrical stimulation to treat chronic pain. And, Neuroderma, which develops pharmaceutical therapies to address the unmet medical needs in neurology, dermatology and aesthetic medicine markets.
NIR Diagnostics looked to tap into a $1.1 billion global market for wound assessment with its InfraVue device. During the team's Venture Finals presentation, the students described current assessment techniques for complex wound healing; current assessments are accurate only about 50 percent of the time. Based on tissue optical properties, InfraVue can predict whether a wound is healing properly or requires further wound therapy. The device is in its beta prototype stage, and has completed animal tests. It will be available soon for human pilot studies.
This year's Venture Finals, which were the culminating event of the year-long competition, attracted 300 venture capitalists, business leaders, faculty and students. The Venture Finals judges represented a broad range and depth of experinece: David A. Cohen, president of Karlin Asset Management; William P. Egan, 1969 Wharton graduate, and founder and general partner at Alta Communications & Marion Equity Partners; Evan Jones, 1983 Wharton graduate and managing member at jVen Capital, LLC; David A. Piacquad, 1984 Wharton graduate and senior vice president of business development at Schering-Plough and Fred Wilson, 1987 Wharton graduate and a partner at Union Square Ventures.
Over the years, the BPC, which is open to any University of Pennsylvania student and managed by Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs, has seen student teams go on to become successful businesses, including PayMyBills.com, buySAFE, NetConversions, Integral Molecular, DealMaven, InfraScan, Verge Solutions, Embrace Pet Insurance, Petplan USA and MicroMRI.