MIT spinoff WiCare, founded by mechanical engineering alumna Danielle Zurovcik SM ’07, PhD ’12, has been named one of six finalists in this year’s Hult Prize competition.
The Hult Prize Foundation is a nonprofit organization focused on supporting social entrepreneurs. This year’s challenge is to solve non-communicable disease in urban slums, and winners receive $1M in seed funding.
Zurovcik, who developed a revolutionary negative pressure wound therapy pump (NPWT) as a PhD student in MechE, started WiCare (Worldwide Innovative Healthcare Inc.) with the goal of bringing high-quality medical devices to low-income countries. She is currently a fellow in the D-Lab Scale-Ups fellowship program.
Her Wound-Pump differs from other NPWT pumps on the market because of its unique materials, application method, and size. Standard pumps cost approximately $100 per day to overcome their inefficient energy usage, preventing low- and middle-income patients from utilizing the therapy. But because the Wound-Pump eliminates such energy waste, it costs less than $2 to manufacture and doesn’t require electricity at all.
Hult Prize finalists will give their presentations this summer, and the winner will be announced in September.
