Health IT

Innovation challenge for senior mobility hopes healthcare professionals tap their inner inventor

A North Carolina innovation forum has kicked off an eight-week campaign to find ideas to […]

A North Carolina innovation forum has kicked off an eight-week campaign to find ideas to help seniors remain mobile and independent. Although the senior market represents a potentially large market opportunity, there’s been growing interest in sourcing workable ideas to help seniors age in place that go beyond remote monitoring devices.

Edison Nation Medical is looking for solutions that include walkers, canes, wheelchairs, transfer devices, and devices to increase independence and safety in the kitchen and bathroom, according to a company statement. Edison Nation Medical collaborates with Carolinas HealthCare System to validate ideas.

Bobby Grajewski, the president of Edison Nation Medical, said in the statement that he sees the competition as a way to spur nurses, caregivers and physicians to step up on the idea front. “Our Senior Mobility search enables those individuals closest to the challenges of senior mobility…to have a very real impact on care and quality of life going forward.”

A spokeswoman for Edison Nation Medical said in an emailed response to questions that the mobile challenge followed a broader senior innovation campaign launched in August last year and which ended last month.

“Our evaluation team is still in the process of sorting through and vetting the various ideas submitted to that search and we won’t know for a number of months as to which of them are worthy of commercializing. The tremendous response we got to the general Senior Care search is what prompted us to launch this current Senior Mobility search so quickly on its heels, but with a more specific focus on an area of Senior Care that we recognize as being very important.”

She also emphasized that the initiative isn’t about picking a winner and included a list of criteria that it uses to evaluate product ideas:

  • Quality of the idea and the uniqueness of the intellectual property;
  • Clinical efficacy;
  • Technical efficacy and the complexity and cost of manufacturing;
  • Current standard of care, size of market, degree of entrenched competition for the idea;
  • Regulatory hurdles and reimbursement opportunities that might hinder or help the idea in achieving success

A shortlisted group of participants will present their ideas to major medical manufacturing partners for potential commercialization, the statement said. Invention ideas can be submitted on the competition website through May 28.

It is also holding a challenge to develop alternatives to reducing the spread of infectious disease – for example, the spread of flu in airplanes or in preschools. The talent seekers ran a similar challenge in the past. Edison Nation has also partnered with Rite Aid on its idea search “to improve the health and wellbeing” of its customers. Edison will design, develop and patent the products Rite Aid selects.

Update: This story has been updated from an earlier version.

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