Newswise — The CIMIT Student Prize for Primary Healthcare competition seeks ideas for technologic innovations with great potential to support and catalyze improved delivery of healthcare at the frontlines of medicine. The top three student entrants (individuals or teams) will receive $150,000, $100,000 and $50,000, respectively*, to help advance their winning clinically-relevant, primary care solutions. (* The funds will be transferred to the student(s) home institution for appropriate dispersal.)

The initial step in this Prize process is CIMIT's selection of ten Finalists from all submissions received by January 17, 2011. Each Finalist will be funded with $10,000 to advance their concept to a full submission, due in June. The three major prize winners will then be selected from those ten final submissions. CIMIT's goal in offering these major awards is to encourage engineering students to develop technological innovations that have great potential to enhance delivery of primary healthcare. Student collaboration and team submissions are strongly encouraged.

TIMELINE FOR THE 2011 AWARD PROCESS:

January 3, 2011: Submission process opensJanuary 17, 2011: Letters of intent due February 15, 2011: Ten finalists announcedMay 31, 2011: Final proposals dueJune 30, 2011: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prize winners announced

This CIMIT Student Prize is made possible because of a generous gift from the Gelfand Family Charitable Trust, which will support the competition annually over the next five years.

>> Learn more online at cimit.orghttp://www.cimit.org/grants-cimitprize.html

>> Request for Applications (RFA) Letter of Intent Guidelines PDF:http://www.cimit.org/images/grants/Prize-Letters-of-Intent-Guidelines-2011.pdf

>> CIMIT Prize Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):http://www.cimit.org/print/grants-prize-faqs.html

ABOUT CIMITCIMIT is a clinically-based consortium of Boston-area hospitals and engineering schools, including Mass General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, MIT, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston University, Boston University Medical Campus, Childrens Hospital Boston, Newton Wellesley Hospital, Northeastern University, Partners HealthCare, and VA Boston Healthcare System, CIMIT supports translational research by multidisciplinary teams for medical device and clinical technology system applications, and through seed funding and facilitation attracts world-class clinicians, scientists and engineers working together with industry and government to accelerate the clinical impact of innovative technologies.