ANNOUNCING: The 2009 DiabetesMine™ Design Challenge

Welcome one and all! Today I’m excited and proud to announce the kickoff of the 2009 DiabetesMine™ Design Challenge, an online competition to encourage creative new tools for improving life with diabetes.

Do you have an idea for an innovative new diabetes device or web application? This is your chance to win up to $10,000 to realize your design concept, and potentially help transform life with diabetes for millions of people!

Watch our video to get the idea:

{Man, those kids are stars!}

We’ve created a special home page for this contest here: www.diabetesmine.com/designcontest

And you can read today’s press release in PDF format right HERE, right now.

This competition is open to everyone, whether you’re a patient, parent of a patient, caregiver, student, entrepreneur, developer, engineer, whatever.  We also welcome entries from kids under age 18, which will be judged in a separate category.

We’re extremely lucky to have the sponsorship of the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) this year, as well support from global innovation firm IDEO and our blogging brethren over at Medgadget.com, the Internet journal of emerging medical technologies.

With their help, three winners will be selected to receive the following A-mazing prizes:

• $10,000 in cash for the Grand Prize winner;

- plus a mini-workshop with Health and Wellness experts at the global design and innovation firm IDEO

- and one free access ticket to the “innovation incubator” Health 2.0 planned for October 2009 in San Francisco, CA

• $5,000 cash for the “Most Creative Idea” category winner;

- plus a consulting session with IDEO design experts

• $2,000 cash for the winner of the Kids’ Category winner

This year, our seven-member judging panel includes some highly influential individuals in healthcare and diabetes treatment, including distinguished endocrinologist Dr. Steven Edelman of TCOYD, and Dr. Ross Jaffe, an eminent Silicon Valley venture capitalist with Versant Ventures.

The contest is open for submissions from now until May 1st, 2009, at 11:59 pm Pacific time. Winners will be announced on Monday, May 18th, 2009.

Submissions are accepted as YouTube videos or brief documents, all to be uploaded online.

Judging will once again be based on three basic criteria:

• Relevance – how well does it solve a real-life problem for people living with diabetes?

• Clinical Efficacy* – how realistic and applicable is this product from a medical standpoint?

• Aesthetics – it’s the look and feel, Baby! How appealing is the pure design?

*Note that the “Most Creative Idea” category will reward the most visionary entry, even if it’s not quite ready for prime time from a clinical efficacy standpoint.

Learn more of the details at the following links:

ABOUT THE CONTEST (story and background)
IN THE NEWS (past media links)
CONTEST RULES
HOW TO ENTER

On the contest home page, you’ll also find many links to get your creative juices flowing: last year’s entries, last year’s winners, and info on the unique Charmr product prototype.

In the words of Aaron Kowalski, Research Director of the Artificial Pancreas Project at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF):  “We can’t overemphasize the impact of design innovation in the lives of people with diabetes. Desirable form factor, ease of use, and potential incorporation of diabetes tools into other devices – like cell phones – all have the potential to transform diabetes management and quality of life for millions of people.”

Right!!  And remember, your concept doesn’t have to be entirely high-tech; good design can be applied to anything, even something as “simple” as a special diabetic carry case.

Let the innovation begin!