The Design Challenge concept was born in Spring of 2007, when creator of DiabetesMine Amy Tenderich posted an Open Letter to Steve Jobs, calling for the gurus of consumer design to help revolutionize design of diabetes devices.

San Francisco-based design firm Adaptive Path actually came forward to tackle the challenge head-on.

Their team created a prototype for a new combo insulin pump / continuous glucose monitor called the Charmr. It’s about the size of a USB stick, with a flat, color touch screen and can be worn on a chain as a necklace or dangled on your keychain!

Watch the video about this visionary creation here.

In the weeks and months that followed, numerous individuals and organizations came forward with more compelling new prototypes, designs, and ideas. These included new concepts for glucose meters, insulin pumps, lancing devices (for testing blood glucose), devices for transporting medical records or tracking glucose results, diabetes supply carry cases and more.

In Spring of 2008, we hosted the first official DiabetesMine Design Challenge here on the site.

You can view the 2008 submissions by clicking here for the videos and here for the paper entries. Winners that year were: LogforLife and Maximum Slide.

In 2009, with the help of the California HealthCare Foundation, we were able to take the contest to a whole new level with a Grand Prize of $10,000.

The competition was a huge success! We received over 150 amazingly creative entries from students, entrepreneurs, developers, patients, parents, caregivers and more.


Learn about the 2009 Grand Prize winner, LifeCase/LifeApp, here.


See also, the Gallery of Highlighted Entries from 2009 here.