First-place winners in the MedMaker Challenge included, from left, second-year medical students Taylor Miller, Davis Zhou, Dong Yao, and John Di Capua. Not pictured, team member Ryan Neff.
SinaInnovations hosted its first MedMaker Challenge this year, a two-day competition to “democratize innovation” that drew 75 participants—including students from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and other institutions, and engineering and software professionals. The goal of the competition was to create a high-tech approach to managing, monitoring, and treating health problems associated with pain and fatigue. In all, 14 teams worked on solutions over a 48-hour period. A panel of judges from Mount Sinai chose first-, second-, and third-place winning teams that received prizes of $3,500, $2,500, and $1,500, respectively.
• 1st Place: PT Partner is a wearable device for patients following knee surgery. It surrounds the knee and ankle joint and tracks the patient’s physical therapy course via a phone application, providing real-time feedback to the patient, as well as important metrics to the care provider, including the completion of scheduled exercise, range of motion, and daily activity.
• 2nd Place: Sickle Me Not is a multiplatform application for managing and engaging pediatric sickle cell patients who live with chronic pain. Patients can communicate with their health care providers and with other children who have sickle cell disease using an iPhone app. 
Features include a physician dashboard, a 3D model that helps patients pinpoint their pain, and the ability to send a fever alert to health care providers.
• 3rd Place: bioLumen is a noninvasive biofeedback therapy that treats lumbar muscle tension—a component of chronic lower back pain—through relaxation in a patient’s home. Data can be uploaded to the patient’s electronic medical record for clinical review.