Indian American led University of Washington students team wins Hollomon Health Innovation Challenge

SEATTLE (TIP): Three students from the University of Washington led by Indian American Tejoram Vivekanandan won the $15,000 grand prize at the UW’s Hollomon Health Innovation Challenge for their non-invasive jaundice-detecting technology. “Newborn jaundice remains the fourth-largest cause of neonatal mortality,” the team stated in their pitch. “We believe Luminovah can significantly improve early detection and treatment, potentially saving thousands of lives worldwide.”
“The whole motivation is we are saving lives,” Vivekanandan, tech lead for their startup Luminovah, told Geeknews. The challenge, he said, is that much of the current technology for identifying jaundice doesn’t do a good job recognizing the condition in babies with more melanin in their skin.
“It’s really hard to get a model working on all skin colors,” Vivekanandan said. But his team has built a tool that should perform well on all skin tones.
They’re currently finishing testing in animal models and partnering with Seattle Children’s to do human studies in pursuit of Food and Drug Administration approval.
They’ve spoken with neonatal healthcare providers and facilities, and say there’s a strong demand for their solution. The startup would also like to offer devices that can be rented by parents of newborns with the condition, which can cause brain damage if untreated. “Our device is super special and really significant,” said Luminovah’s Lillian Tran. The team’s third member is Nana Wang.
The startup won both the $15,000 Hollomon Family Grand Prize and the $2,500 Naturacur Wound Healing Best Idea for a Medical Device prize.
Vivekanandan, whose background spans research stints at ISRO in 2019 and NASA in 2020, previously worked as a research assistant in the Computational Imaging Lab at IIM Madras, India. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Coimbatore Institute of Technology in India before joining UW. The competition described as offering “students the opportunity to come up with meaningful solutions to big problems the world faces today related to health,” was hosted by the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship in the Foster School of Business.