2025 Fall Patient-Centered Health Make-a-Thon
- Event Type
- Other
- Sponsor
- Carle Illlinois College of Medicine, Office of Research and Innovation
- Location
- Medical Sciences Building; other details TBA
- Date
- Dec 6, 2025 - Dec 7, 2025 All Day
- Contact
- Office of Research and Innovation
- ori@medicine.illinois.edu
- Views
- 205
- Originating Calendar
- Carle Illinois College of Medicine General Events
Design with Empathy. Innovate with Purpose. Compete for $10,000.
The Inaugural Patient-Centered Health Make-A-Thon invites interdisciplinary student teams to co-design innovative solutions with real patients. This hands-on event offers a unique opportunity to tackle real healthcare challenges through the design thinking process, guided by mentors and patient collaborators.
Each team will be paired with a patient co-designer who has a complex or nuanced medical challenge and use empathic problem solving around their lived reality to develop an early-phase solution prototype with support from the Office of Research and Innovation (ORI), resources from CI MED Professor Deana McDonagh and the (dis)ability Design Studio, and access to the Siebel Center for Design Makerspace.
All prototyping costs are fully sponsored by ORI.The top three teams will be awarded seed funding from a $10,000 prize pool and the opportunity to advance their projects through the CI MED Innovation Curriculum and the Cozad New Venture Challenge. We hope every team identifies an impactful opportunity they’re inspired to continue, whether as a capstone project or through ongoing innovation work.
Teams will meet Saturday (Dec 6th) to understand the patient challenge and develop their solution concepts. Teams will present to the judging panel the following day, Sunday (Dec 7th).
Saturday, December 6, 2025
- 8:30 - 9:20 am Breakfast and welcome
- 9:20am -1 pm Students meet with their patients to discuss problem statements
- 1 pm - Remainder of day teams work on prototyping projects
Sunday, December 7, 2025
- 8:30 am - Breakfast and pitch competition
- 12 pm - Awards announced