Healthcare industry is a great potential market as people’s life expectancy is getting longer with medical breakthroughs and awareness of healthcare importance is rising. To equip students with latest entrepreneurial knowledge and skills in developing in this emerging business, T&M-DDP’s Corporate Project of Spring Term 2017, sponsored by HARMAN, used Heath Tech Startup as a topic to coach student through the process of establishing a startup.

The course guided students with the time tested Startup methodology to identify potential problem space in the healthcare system, develop technologically feasible solutions, conduct user research, perform market validation, develop a business plan, and pitching for investment. The highlight of the course was a 1-week social media marketing campaign to validate the product in front of potential customers in the real world. Students did receive feedbacks from potential customers worldwide which is encouraging.

The final presentation was held on 26 April 2017. Four teams of multi-disciplined students pitched their ideas to “potential investors” who were experts of startup and healthcare industry and competed for the winner. The winning team, KoalaCare, formed by Sivaraam MUTHUKUMAR, Shivang GUPTA, Lucas Otis Layfield GAYLORD and Arnold Gei-wah SHUM, found that more than 50% of  type 1 diabetics, and more than 33% of type 2 diabetics suffer from nocturnal hypoglycemia which is often left untreated and leading to fatigue, convulsions, unconsciousness, brain damage and in rare cases, even death. The team created a wearable to monitor the users’ bio-signals throughout the night and alerts them when a hypoglycemic event is going to occur. They will also provide an easily accessible website to track and view trends for more advanced users. Judges were impressed by their excellent presentation skills and the prototype produced by 3D-printing. The product created was innovative with feasible business models plus good market potentials that earned them the winner.      

T&M-DDP is keen on promoting entrepreneurship and always encourages students to pursue for dreams out of any preset boundaries. Corporate Project is only a start point, a catalyst for these future entrepreneurs to go much further in future.