A huge thank you and congratulations to all who participated in our 2010 open innovation contest! Once again we feel that this effort is an example of 
“crowdsourcing” at its best — asking the community for its brightest concepts to help improve life with diabetes.
This year we received more than 130 unique submissions. Dozens of those were from university students, studying Design, Medicine, Sports Medicine, Engineering, Chemical and Mechanical Engineering and more. In particular, we saw heavy participation from Design students, based in the US, and Europe and Asia as well.
Participating institutions included (in alphabetical order):
- Aston University (UK)
- Carnegie Melon University
- Grinnell College (Iowa)
- Mayo Clinic
- Medical College of Wisconsin
- Montclair State University
- North Carolina State University
- Northwestern University
- Ohio Northern University (ONU)
- Ohio State University
- Pepperdine University
- Stanford University
- Tufts University
- University of Cincinnati
- University of Missouri
- University of Pennsylvania / School of Medicine
- University of Singapore
A pretty nice lineup!
In addition, there were more than 20 entrants who identified themselves as “Professional Designers,” and about 18 who placed themselves in the “Entrepreneur/Start-up Company” category. This is of course in addition to the many engineers, tinkerers, patients, parents and caregivers who poured their hearts into creative new ideas.
The challenge for our Judging Team this year was to balance the sometimes competing concepts of “great design” versus “innovation.” Do we rate beauty and aesthetics over feasibility of the product idea to actually work and come to market? And what about its potential impact: Do we honor a great solution for a niche market, or look only for things that broadly impact as many people’s lives as possible?
Following a very lively 3-hour debate session, I am pleased to announce that our Grand Prize winners this year span the gamut of these concerns.
Without further ado, please meet the winners:
GRAND PRIZE WINNERS (3)
* Winners are listed in alphabetical order*
{Prize package: $7,000 in cash, plus complementary consulting with IDEO Design Health & Wellness experts, and one free access ticket to the October 2010 Health 2.0 Conference}
Finn is a bright and appealing PlaySkool-like glucose monitor for small children. The design received an overwhelming number of popular votes here on the blog. With its big, easy buttons and oh-so-cute matching nautical case, it’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder, “Why isn’t there already a product on the market like this for little kids with diabetes?”
The judges agreed that Finn the Glucose Fish is a clever practical solution to the problem of how to make glucose testing more appealing to children.
Not only that, but our IDEO judge felt that Finn creates the basis for a full platform of products that could engage children: a variety of characters, with ever-new interactive features. In other words, you could build a system around it.
Congratulations to University of Cincinnati design student Samantha Gustafson for her winning design!
Test Drive is a concept for a driving safety system that would prevent diabetics from getting behind the wheel with too-low blood sugar. We judges felt this concept had a huge potential impact in the lives of many with diabetes:
- preventing teenagers (or any PWDs) from hurting themselves or others due to hypoglycemia
- helping PWDs apply for jobs that require driving, like truck drivers or delivery services, or even positions as airline pilots, which may now be off-limits to PWDs due to fears of hypoglycemia
- providing documentation for insurance and other liability issues in the form of data proving reasonable blood sugar levels before setting out in a car
Test Drive is still a rough idea that will require some work with designers to actually visualize the product. But we believe the ground floor idea is momentous.
Congratulations to parent/caregiver Barbara McClatchey for her innovative thinking!
Zero is a fantastic visionary concept of what the future of combined micro-sized glucose monitors/insulin pumps could look like. It is, as one of our judges noted, “essentially a functioning artificial pancreas in an armband.”
Even if it may not be real and practical yet, we felt that Zero was the strongest design proposal among all the entrants this year — “a beautifully conceived product platform overall.” It had some components that may indeed be executable immediately, like the very appealing mobile user interface. We generally felt that the designer behind this has the kind of vision we’d like to nurture, and encourage to join the diabetes industry.
Congratulations to professional designer Mauro Amoruso on his winning design!
Stay tuned here in the next weeks to learn more about our three amazing Grand Prize Winners.
Now, on to our community category winners:
{Prizes = $1,000 in cash each}
Most Creative Idea
Your votes selected In Sue Lin’s World, an interactive game that helps children learn how to manage diabetes.
According to its creator: “By spending time with Sue Lin, children learn more about managing their own blood glucose levels, how different foods affect their blood sugar, and when to take insulin. This game creates a comfortable and comforting learning environment for a child who has been diagnosed with diabetes. This application could be compatible with mobile devices or included with glucose monitoring devices.”
Congratulations to Susan Stiles of the creative start-up company Oak Grove Technologies!
Kids Category Winner
{from entrants ages 17 and under}
Your votes also selected AniMeter, an idea for another glucose meter in the shape of an animal. But its 16-year-old creator envisions this one as a talking meter that is closely tied to the web.
“By speaking back to the child it promotes a healthy life. AniMeter has a USB cord that would be used to connect the meter to AniMeter.com. AniMeter.com would have games, Live Chat for parents with questions and a connection with doctors so that fast adjustments can be made to the child’s regimen, if necessary,” Megan writes.
Nice thinking, and a very nice presentation, Megan. Congratulations to you!
Again, CONGRATULATIONS to all! Your creativity is our lifeline. 
Many thanks to the California HealthCare Foundation for making this competition possible.
Winners will hear from us shortly.
Also, Dear Readers: Please tune in here in the next weeks for more in-depth information on the winning designs and the people behind them, along with a look at some of our favorite “runner-up” entries.
Congratulations to the winners!!! and all who took part.
Keep improving
Amy, thanks so much for pushing the envelope on design and diabetes. This is a great set of designs, I hope I can see these on the street before too long.
Awesome entries, and I’m hoping these make it out into the market!
kids? don’t think I won’t buy a Glucose Fish when it’s available (although I would also use a glucose elephant, glucose giraffe, or a glucose platypus). I also have to say after reading the designer’s last name was Gustafson, I immediately thought of Swedish fish, which are also Glucose Fish in their own way, but now I’m really digressing…so, to sum up: great contest, very interesting submissions, and I think I very deserving winner.
Awesome designs! It’s great that this contest exists and that people get a chance to express some great ideas that would truly help diabetics.
However, it does make one pretty cynical & depressed to see all these great ideas amount to nothing. I’ve been a fan of this contest for 3 years and thought every winning product is a great idea, but where are they now? The medical device industry is so glacial and the approval process so lengthy that by the time anything comes to market it is already obsolete.I like my insulin pump just fine, but every single thing about it – the design, the technolgy, the user interface – is from about 1998. Literally.
Last years winner and one of this years showed great user interfaces that worked on an iPhone. The iPhone has been around for 3 years and although there some decent tracking apps, there is no sign of it ever interfacing with a meter or pump. A year ago Johnson & Johnson actually demo’d such a concept at an Apple event, and where is that product now?
Ok, rant over!
Awesome stuff. Thank you Amy for introducing such a great contest, and for facilitating everything!
[...] LINK: 2010 DiabetesMine Design Challenge Winners… [...]
[...] Конкурс 2010 DiabetesMine™ Design Challenge ставит собой целью поиск новых концептов и идей для облегчения жизни пациентов с сахарным диабетом. [...]
I am HUGELY against ‘low driving’ and it drives me batty that I have relatives that do this. I seriously want to fund billboards that say ‘low driving IS drunk driving’.
I always test before driving; however, sometimes my test ‘before driving’ is actually say 20 minutes in advance, or an hour in advance. Between my tight control and my knowledge of whether I am rising or falling (confirmed by cgms), this system may provide comfort to a mother, but would cause me to go insane.
Maybe not everyone is as ‘good’ as I am – but why should I be punished with such a contraption? What if I get in an accident and the last meter reading says 100? What if the prosecutor decides to argue that that is unsafe? This is a huge invasion of privacy with potentially devastating legal ramifications.
@susan – we are by no means suggesting that the Test Drive be installed punitively for every diabetic — rather that it has powerful uses in certain circumstances (i.e. voluntary)
These idea’s that are winners are okay. I would have made the first on the list the continous monitor and pump that is a wrist band, nice idea since I’m a pump user myself. Closest thing to a “cure” yet, but until the computer shrinks down with it all and it automatically adjusts insulin dosage for bg readings as you go through the day with OUT the hassle of manuel checks, like a human body, the idea is just that, okay. Keeping the disease at bay as a type one is the most important priority so I would have made this prize one for any age group.
The rest is average. Seems better “idea’s” could be produced with todays advances in technology and other areas. But I’ve lived with type one diabetes 36 years, and I can see the results of the ADA saying a cure would happen in ten years at age six. Thirty six years later, the best “cure” I’ve used is an insulin pump, and it is a long way from what the potential is for better treatment.
The potential out there for better ways to deal with diabetes with technology far exceed what has been demonstrated with the entries in this contest. So being, that this is probably just students, they did a good job.
But there is a tremendous amount of room for better ideas. I haven’t seen anything “brilliant” in any of these. None I’d be happy to have to deal with if I was first being diagnosed with diabetes in having to use. I’d want stuff that I could use that made me “normal”.
Can any invent a pancreas that works like a real one? Now that I’d give brilliant award!
Diabetes should have been cured a long time ago according to what the ADA told me when I was six, I think they told me a fund raising lie. Since then I don’t donate to the ADA because they are liars and I highly doubt what they do will ever “cure” anything!
Work sincere to cure diabetes – all – and harder! I’m hardened about “new stuff” after 36 years of living with type one. It takes a lot to impress me with “innovation”, you have to really do something with what is “possible” to impress me. Just about cure it I’d say! LOL! I think it is possible to cure diabetes now with what is possible in the technical and medical fields.
DJ Emery
@DJ – The Grand Prize Winners are listed in ALPHABETICAL ORDER only – no priorities expressed here. Thanks for your input!
[...] seekers take action. The market for diabetes innovations could be much better indeed. The recent Diabetes Mine innovation contest (for which I was a judge) just ended, with $21K in 3 first prizes given to three deserving [...]
Love your design. However I was disappointed the contest picked 3 winners that had virtually the same design. Yours was the most complete, using the child meter of FInn the Glucose Fish and the web application of In Sue Linn’s World. I think your’s should have been chosen but 2 other unique entries should have been chosen instead of duplicating 2 child meters like the above mentioned.
@ Ryan H – I know you’ve been complaining repeatedly about the winners “duplicating 2 child meters” — but as I communicated in our emails, these designs were chosen by COMMUNITY VOTING here on the site. So if the community liked two similar ideas, so be it.
… isn’t the best way to judge contests. Next time the community should vote on some contest judges, maybe three at most to pick the winning stuff. That way the contests don’t come out all whacky with stuff winning in an order that really isn’t fair.
The winning stuff is okay, but none of it is “brilliant” so I challenge the next contestants to CURE DIABETES! LOL! Please! Would you please cure it for us who are TERMINAL DIABETES sufferers!
I’m dying from the disease myself, I’m on PD dialysis, use an insulin pump, have had it 36 years, and the docs at UNC say I’m not “psychylogically” stable enough for a transplant because I skip dialysis treatments some times and other stuff! LOL! Just because I’d like to be normal! Or go fishing over night, or act like a damned human!
I hate diabetes, invent something that makes me hate it less. I would give that first prize! Diabetes is my death, I hate it like I hate DEATH him or herself. What ever death will be, I don’t have a lot longer in this world to wait to find out I’m guessing. Hope to prove the docs wrong, maybe a device designed that would prove docs wrong when they tell patients like me I’ll be lucky to live to fifty!
The doc that told me that was in Louisiana, in Lake Charles, and if I could go back to Lake Charles and find him, I’d like to punch him in particular in the nose. He didn’t help anything at all with diabetes type one. Just makes me angry and I hold it for him till this day, and that happened over ten years ago! LOL! But I’d still like to punch him in the nose!
@ Dwight – Just one more time for clarity: the community voted on 25 semi-finalists to narrow it down to 10 finalists. Then our expert judging team picked three Grand Prize winners from that group. None of them were repetitive or “whacky.”
The Kids Winner and Creative Winner were chosen via community voting from a group of 4 finalists in each category. If these winners seemed to be somewhat similar to the Grand Prize winning ideas, that is pure coincidence.
The goal of this competition is to encourage creative thinking in tools for living better with diabetes — not to invent the cure (I wish!) You personally may not be super enthusiastic here, but I assure you there was nothing “unfair” going on.
Done ‘splainin.
And yeah, I hear you about sometimes wanting to punch somebody in the nose
Hi Amy,
Thanks for creating and organising this innovative competition. It was really fun to take part and see what everyone else came up with. Congrats to the winners!
Had you any plans to post what the community voting results were? Would be cool to see how much support the semi-finalists got and nice to know for all the people that voted how their opinions compared.
Cheers, Ben
Be nice to see an insulin infusion device designed with both the insulin pump/ continous monitoring/ and not yet invented yet/ but the ability to raise bg in severe low’s in emergency like a built in glucose delivery system. Basically an artificial pancreas that does everything but eat for you! LOL!
For a guy like me, also an insulin pump that can handle a beating in rough treatment, water proof, and wearable in such a way as to not get caught up on things so easy when working in the normal everyday activities like raking a yard. Insulin infusion lines getting jerked out on rake handles sucks rocks at times.
When I first got my insulin pump, it went through two replacements before I learned not to damage it doing heavy duty things and activity. Also, a pump needs to be able to go a lot longer before having to be refilled with a canula that can survive more than “two or three days” before being changed out.
The more “normal” a person with type one can be, the better they will keep diabetes in “control” as the idiots of medicine term it in the illusion of “idealogy” they have about the reality of diabetes! All those “idiots” need to have a pancreas removed so they can understand the ease of keeping a balanced bg throughout a life time trying to be normal in a world totally ignorant about diabetes reality and the effects it will have long term. Even on you who think you are “okay” now will, with out the best fight you can envision and DO will pay a price both mentally and physically with your health. I’ve watched many who say insulin and a needle is all they need later on in life wish they had gone with a pump with type one, and done a better job fighting with the best “control” or “illusion of control” these docs want us to believe we can gain. I say illusion because real control with diabetes type one is only obtainable with a real cure, everything else is “out of control” if in the first place you even have diabetes to start with. Insulin is just a stop gap if there is no way of keeping it working 24/7 in an adequate manner, like repeated injections over a life time just to keep diabetes from ripping your other organs apart piece by piece. I speak on this matter from my 36 years of type one, and any doctor who wants to tell me diabetes is a “controllable” thing is so full of bs they have no idea what the reality of a life time of diabetes brings with the reality of day to day living in a real world of humans that DON’T have diabetes. Total BS for the doctors and medical profession to believe the lie they follow as “tradition” now days.
Control can be obtained, the technology exists where a very close thing to a cure can happen, it will only be a matter of the medical idiots to decide “WHEN” because at the moment the bottom line for them is more profit from the disasters diabetes brings with organ failures, eye disease, neuropathy and on and on the profit goes on that end. Not to mention the insulin industry itself is hugely profitable with the kinds of insulin I have to use at a hundred dollars a damned bottle! When I started using insulin, it was only around ten bucks a bottle! Inflation or Bull Crap going on with greedy pharmacy companies robbing people?
A real cure is possible, and some of you have nice idea’s, but think about the big picture of a life time of diabetes, and what would be really nice solutions for diabetes to bring down the averages on new disabilities due to diabetes like kidney failure, and eye failure and the such if a way to control the disease was designed such as to implement ease of use on the system used as ell as overall function of the systems used. For a person to fit into the normal world of eat when they want, how they want, and what they want would be nice. Or if they didn’t want to eat at all, then they don’t have to eat and follow a “meal plan” and all the other bull crap doctors consider every job must have built in, every function in life must have with it! LOL!
In my life I’ve worked jobs my bosses didn’t give a crap if I had diabetes or not, the job mattered, not my damned lunch break, so be it, design something that works in the real world people. Don’t play around with the bull shit inventions that aren’t worth me taking the time to sit and read aobut while I’m on my toilet.
Some ideas are okay, but none meet the brilliance that is possible yet. I stand by that, the best one in this list was the wrist insulin pump, and even it was not brilliant.
DJ Emery