A few years ago—you know, back when Apple had only sold a total of 100 million iPods—a newly diagnosed diabetic wrote Apple's CEO Steve Jobs. Amy Tenderich bemoaned the lack of sophistication of medical devices, specifically devices for diabetes management.
 
“Most of [our] devices are clunky, make weird alarm sounds, are hard to use and burn quickly through batteries,” Tenderich wrote on her blog, diabetesmine.com. “Their design doesn’t hold a candle to the iPod.”

 
Fast-forward three years and there's a Web-based design competition that offers $23,000 in cash prizes for sleekly designed diabetes equipment. The 2009 Diabetes Mine contest winner was a prototype hardware and software system for iPhones designed by graduate students at Northwestern University. The duo also created an app to test blood sugar as routinely as checking e-mail or a text message. One of those students, Samantha Katz, is now a global product manager for Medtronic.
 
“Combining different supplies into one device makes it less obvious you’re using an insulin delivery system,” said Katz.
 
Hopefully similar devices will make their way into another upcoming competition: the Medical Design Excellence Awards. Check out the website for rules and more information. —Lawrence Lloyd