Cancer-Screening Software Wins Prize

by Brian Lee

The goal of the Qualcomm Wireless Innovation Prize is for University of Wisconsin students to develop new wireless technology products and marry those ideas with tangible, market-ready business plans.

Consider that accomplished.

On Thursday, Isabel Callan, Yuan He, Katherine Hildebrand and Amanda MacAllister won $10,000 for creating software to more efficiently screen for cervical cancer. Named AlgoCerv, the software “enables people with limited medical training to scan Pap smear slides and provide results to a patient before she leaves the clinic,” according to a university release.

“It was the right mix of having something that was original and meeting a specific key need,” Samir Gupta of Qualcomm, who served as a judge, said in a statement. “The real need in industry was quite clear.”

Second place and $5,000 went to a team that developed an electronic patch that reads a user’s gestures to execute a pre-programmed command, such as making a call or loading an app.

Eleven teams entered this year’s contest.