Youth Entrepreneurs and Medical Product Innovations

Youth Entrepreneurs: Leaders of Tomorrow; Innovating Today

Entrepreneurship is something that’s always been near and dear to the MAKO team’s heart. It’s inspiring to see youth already embodying the culture and vision that we instill in one another and see in our clients every day.  Change and innovation is an emerging cornerstone of tomorrow’s leading entrepreneurs.

A contest was recently hosted by our friends at Google with awards given to finalists from around the world.  The youngest recipient of these awards, a 13-year old from Portland, Oregon has just changed the medical game with her latest invention. Her big idea – a bandage that tells you when it needs to be changed.

Anushka Naiknaware speaks at TEDWomen 2017

The Entrepreneur and her Invention

To promote healing, wounds must remain moist.  If a bandage is changed too frequently to monitor moisture levels, it dries the wound resulting in slower healing time. Who came to the rescue of this life problem?  No, it wasn’t a doctor. No, it wasn’t even someone in the medical field…  It was seventh-grader named Anushka Naiknaware.  She embedded bandages with tiny monitors that sense moisture, allowing the medical professionals to determine if it should be changed.

Naiknaware was awarded the Lego Education Builder Award, which includes a $15 000 scholarship, a free trip to the Lego world headquarters in Denmark, and one year of entrepreneurship mentoring from a Lego executive. When asked what she’s going to do with her prizes, her response was really quite typical of any 13-year-old girl: She’s going to use her entrepreneurial mentoring to figure out how to get her bandages FDA approved so a company can produce them for the public!  We’re sure you saw that coming from a Rockstar like Anushka Naiknaware

One of the best parts of the experience for her was the feeling of something she thought of coming to fruition. “My idea became a physical, tangible reality,” she said. A feeling we at MAKO love seeing in our clients’ entrepreneurial product innovations.

Anushka Naiknaware with her bandage product

Youth Entrepreneurs and MAKO

Just a few months ago, in partnership with Brookefield Institute and Ryerson, the MAKO Student Innovation Award, a $100,000 grant distributed over the next 10 years, was most recently awarded to HelpWear.  Their first product, which secured the MAKO award for them, was the HeartWatch, which allows for 24/7 heart monitoring, including an embedded emergency contact system. Another amazing product innovation in the medical industry by the leaders of tomorrow – today’s young entrepreneurs.

Check out more on the MAKO Student Innovation Awards and HelpWear here.

About: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop-shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories. Also, our founder Kevin Mako hosts The Product Startup Podcast, the industry's leading hardware podcast. Check it out for tips, interviews, and best practices for hardware startups, inventors, and product developers. Click HERE to learn more about MAKO Design + Invent!