CPRGlove, Digital Dash win at regional entrepreneurship competition

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/LaunchPad.jpg” caption=”Nilesh Patel, Corey Centen and Sarah Smith of Atreo Medical and Tim Pryor of Digital Dash. Photo courtesy of Faculty of Engineering.”]Two business ventures seeded at McMaster University took first and third at the Wes Nichol LaunchPad $50K regional entrepreneurship challenge held in Waterloo on April 4.

Corey Centen, Nilesh Patel and Sarah Smith, students from the electrical and biomedical engineering program at McMaster, won the competition. Their company, Atreo Medical Inc., is pursuing commercialization of the CPRGlove, a medical device designed to help people properly deliver CPR, improve training practices and increase survival rates from cardiac arrest.

Third place went to Tim Pryor, an entrepreneur pursuing a Master's of Engineering Entrepreneurship and Innovation degree at McMaster. His team is developing the Digital Dash Tactile Display, the world's first curved, multi-touch interface that can incorporate real controls directly on its surface. Applications include automotive dashboards allowing for more freedom in creating stylish, dramatic and tailor-made instrument panels.

Atreo Medical won $25,000 in cash and in-kind services for winning the event and Digital Dash took home $10,000 in cash and in-kind services for placing third. The two teams also qualified to compete in the National Wes Nicol Entrepreneurial Award competition in Ottawa on May 6.

The Wes Nichol LaunchPad $50K competition involved 27 teams from 10 Ontario universities. Competing teams each had 15 minutes to pitch their business concept to a panel of judges.

Both McMaster teams gained entry into the LaunchPad $50K regional competition by finishing in the top three at the first McMaster Wes Nicol Entrepreneurship Challenge held on Feb. 8. It was organized by the Xerox Centre for Engineering Entrepreneurship and Innovation.