BMEidea Competition Guidelines

Welcome to the BMEidea competition guidelines!

General Information | Who is eligible? | How are entries evaluated? | How to apply | Narrative guidelines and executive summary

General Information

The BMEidea Competition is sponsored by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA); Boston Scientific; MD&DI (Medical Device & Diagnostic Industry), a publication of Canon Communications LLC; and Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), in partnership with the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) and the Council of Chairs of Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering Programs.

Competition winners will receive cash awards ($10,000 first place, $2,500 second place, and $1,000 third place), as well as access to resources to be used to further develop and commercialize their products. They will also have the opportunity to present their designs and business plans to representatives of investor organizations. Cash prizes will be disbursed to each of the winning team's departments to be allocated at the discretion of the faculty advisor.

Team members have rights to all intellectual property, subject to the rules of their home institutions, unless assigned to others in exchange for support, sponsorship, or funding. Teams will be encouraged to retain a significant and motivating interest in their project results.
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Who is eligible?

Graduate and undergraduate student teams at colleges and universities are eligible. Each team must include at least one engineering student.  Teams are encouraged to incorporate members from diverse fields such as business, law, medicine, dentistry, nursing, physical therapy, life sciences, physical sciences, or other related disciplines. Projects should focus on a new health-related technology, be invented by students, and address a real clinical need.

There is a limit of one entry per department within an academic institution. Inter-institutional collaborations are also encouraged; we require a faculty advisor from each institution.
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How are entries evaluated?

BMEidea competition entries will be judged on the following criteria:

  1. Technical feasibility
  2. Clinical utility
  3. Economic feasibility and market potential
  4. Novelty and patentability
  5. Potential for commercialization

The categories for product designs may include:

  1. Surgery
  2. Therapeutic applications
  3. Diagnostic applications
  4. Rehabilitative and assistive technologies
  5. Home healthcare
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How do teams apply?

All proposals must be submitted to the NCIIA online. Create an account and login here and find the BMEidea RFP in the list of available opportunities. You may start, save, stop and return to the application before submitting. The online application process has five steps and will require the following:

Step 1: basic contact information
Step 2: basic proposal information
Step 3: request verification
Step 4: upload required and recommended documents (including the executive summary, narrative, and other appendices)
Step 5: submit

**Preview the application, in PDF form**

PLEASE NOTE: this PDF includes screen shots of NCIIA's five-step proposal process. The proposal shown is an Advanced E-Team grant  proposal, but steps for the BMEidea application are the same. This PDF is for preview purposes only.

 

STEP ONE: Submit basic contact information

  • Name of the institution you represent.
  • Names and contact information of team members, including the Faculty Advisor and Department Chair.

Please note that résumés NO MORE THAN 3 pages each will be required as appendices for all team members (résumés for your Department Chair are not needed).


STEP TWO: Submit basic proposal information

  • Project title (short and catchy is best).
  • An abstract (250 words or less) with general information about the project.

STEP THREE: Request verification

  • The Department Chair and the Faculty Advisor (this is waived if the Faculty Advisor is also the applicant) must verify their support of the competition application. To ensure timely approval of your application by your institution, apprise them of your intention to submit 3-4 weeks advance of the deadline and share your application with them prior to submission.
  • When you have entered their e-mail addresses, each of the above administrators will receive an automated e-mail address requesting their verification of support. Allow 2-3 days for them to respond.
  • The application cannot be submitted until your administrators have responded to the request for verification.

STEP FOUR: Upload required documents and other appendices

Narrative description guidelines
The narrative may not exceed ten pages in length (double-spaced, 12 point font). Please include any images referenced in your narrative in the body of the narrative, and NOT as appendices. Please prepare a narrative description that includes the following:

  • Executive summary (2 pages). An outline of the strategy for commercialization and opportunity statement. See below for additional details.
  • Description of the problem to be solved (no more than 1/2 page). What are the market and/or industry needs that you intend to address?
  • Project objective statement (no more than 1/2 page). How does your team intend to address the problem?
  • Documentation of the final design (1 page). Be sure to inculde applicable standards and a risk analysis.
  • Prototype of the final design (1 page).
  • Proof that the design is functional and will solve the problem (1 page). Include test data, market research or pre-clinical/clinical trials.
  • Results of a patent search and/or search for prior art, assessment and patentability (1 page). Two excellent resources for this search are www.uspto.gov, and your institution's technology transfer office.
  • Anticipated regulatory pathway (510(k) vs. PMA, etc.) (1 page). Consider researching how the FDA has treated analogous devices.
  • Estimated manufacturing costs (1 page). Provide detailed per unit cost breakdown, including volume discount, for components, final assembly, quality assurance, etc.
  • Market analysis and sales strategy (1 page). Define the market need, competitive landscape, potential market size, selling price, distribution channels, reimbursement strategy, etc.

What's in an Executive Summary? An executive summary summarizes all of the above and serves as a stand-alone justification for why this idea should be pursued. Be sure to address the essentials including:

  • Problem: What is the problem you aim to solve?
  • Solution: How do you solve it?
  • Competition: What are alternate methods of solving the problem; or anticipated methods that could be in competition with you in the future?
  • Differentiation: Why will people choose your solution over others?
  • Technical Feasibility: Have you done it and can it be done?
  • Regulatory and Reimbursement: What FDA approvals will be required?  What Medicare/Medicaid strategy is needed?
  • Sales and Marketing: What is the estimated size of the market (with rationale)? Who is the buyer/customer/user? Who will they buy it from? At what pricing?

STEP FIVE: Submit

When you are sure Steps 1-4 have been completed and advisors have verified their support, please click submit. You will receive an email confirming the submission of the application.

 

If you have any questions, please contact us at info@nciia.or or call at 413-587-2172.

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