Winning the competition
The eighteen-year-old Mexican, Julián Ríos, has won $ 20,000 for getting first place in the Global Student Entrepreneurs’ Awards with his project. With the collaboration of Higia a Mexican biosensor company that detects breast cancer which sponsored him, Ríos and his team were able to design «EVA», a bra that detects breast cancer through a device that records thermal data.
The Global Student Entrepreneur competition is for excellent students who have a for-profit business or a social enterprise. This year it was attended by 1,700 competitors from more than 50 countries. The countries that reached the final in Germany in addition to Mexico were El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, and Pakistan. This was Mexico’s seventh time participating in this contest and thanks to Rios they got the first place in this edition.
Getting the tech right
In 2015, Ríos decided to invent a method that would help detect breast cancer by overcoming the limitations of conventional methods, said the Tecnológico de Monterrey high school student last March. Rios started looking on the internet “What is cancer?” And shortly afterward managed to design, along with three colleagues, a device that detects breast cancer thanks to biosensors. This device can be easily used by placing it inside the bra making a very practical option.
Jose Antonio Torres, co-founder and technology director of the company, explained last March how the device works, which records the abnormal temperatures in the breasts with the presence of cysts, calcifications, and malignant tumors.”EVA” is used one hour a week for a month to store user data, which can be monitored with an application on the mobile: “The more data we have from the woman, the better the algorithm is made to predict cancer”, explains Torres. The algorithm has a diagnostic efficiency of 93 %, “which is quite high compared to other elements such as scanning and ultrasound, ranging from 20 % to 50 %”.
EVA will come back soon
In an optimal scenario, “EVA” would go on sale by the end of 2018, but they still have to get the corresponding authorizations from the Federal Commission for Protection against Health Risks (Cofepris), which could delay the process.
Share with
