Students win global innovation competition

Surgical invention impresses the judges in Texas - News Release

Students from Imperial College London have fought off competition from international teams to win the Idea to Product global competition in Austin, Texas, held on Saturday 11 November.

The event is an early-stage technology commercialization competition to encourage entrepreneurship.

The winning team consisted of two PhD students: Omer Aziz, a Surgeon in the Faculty of Medicine, and Adam James, a Bioengineer in the Faculty of Engineering, and David Simmons, an Executive MBA student, under the supervision of Professor Sir Ara Darzi , from the Department of Biosurgery & Surgical Technology, and Professor Guang-Zhong Yang , from the Institute of Biomedical Engineering.

Professor Darzi, a leading NHS surgeon conceived the idea of the 'Smart Bougie' two years ago and since then it has been developed by this biomedical team over two years with support from the Helen Hamlyn Foundation and Royal College of Art in creating the prototype devices.

The invention, a sensor enabled surgical dilator, would enable doctors to safely open blockages in the esophagus during surgery, which is currently done with passive devices like balloons. The Bougie is on 'active' dilator giving feedback at the site of procedure, providing the surgeon with information from the site of repair.

Adam James, from the winning team commented: "We faced a range of extremely strong teams and technologies but we had the right balance and application that saw us come away with the judge's vote."

Sponsored by Dr Tim Meldrum, from the Tanaka Business School Entrepreneurship Centre, the team beat 18 other teams over three days of competing. They faced international competition from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Stanford University and the University of Texas.

The competition involved pitching their technology and its commercial potential to a judging panel consisting of engineers, patent lawyers and venture capitalists from all over America.

The team had previously won the European Idea to Product competition in June 2006, which was hosted by Tanaka Business School at the College.

Click here for the Tanaka news release .