Not only does the winning design win up to $10,000, it could also help transform the lives of millions of people living with diabetes.

You have until May 1st to enter. Full instructions can be found at the Enter the Contest page.

Check out last year’s winning entries, which include an online logbook and a Pez-candy-like dispenser for glucose test strips, to get into the creative groove.

Post from: Healthbolt

DiabetesMine and Medgadget are co-hosting the 2nd Annual DiabetesMine Design Challenge…

“a competition designed to foster innovation in diabetes design and encourage creative new tools that will improve life with diabetes.”

This challenge is a follow on from the Open Letter to Steve Jobs that Amy Tenderich from DiabetesMine posted last year right after Apple Inc. has sold its 100-Millionth iPod. Amy’s open letter challenged Steve Jobs and the ‘gods of consumer design’ to champion the diabetic cause and help show the medical device industry how to create more feel good and look good diabetic devices – in other words, move medical devices out of the clunky into the cool.

I don’t know if Amy got any response from Steve Jobs but it did create lots of discussion and conversation, plus some new prototypes, designs, and ideas.

Somehow I think she’s given up on Apple Inc coming to the party. Instead she has issued a challenge to everyone and anyone -individuals and organizations – to put on their thinking caps and start designing.

You’ll need to head over to DiabetesMine to get the full rundown on offical contest rules but here’s a brief synopsis…

* there are two categories – under 18 and over 18.

* Submissions can be made beginning April 30, 2008, until Monday, May 26st, 2008, at 11:59 pm PST.

* All entries must be in the form of a movie or an animation, no more than 2 minutes long (all content in English), which will be submitted by uploading into the DiabetesMine™ channel on YouTube.

* Each product or design concept must be new, i.e. introduced within the last half-year, or in development phase, possibly undergoing user testing now.

The winner from each category will recieve a combination of rewards…

* prize money of $1,000 each in two entry categories. (provided by sponsors Cory and Justin Oringer who have both been living with Type 1 diabetes for more than 10 years each)

* a two hour workshop from IDEO’s Health and wellness consultants to help refine your concept.

* free access ticket for the winner of the adult catagory to the “innovation incubator” Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, October 21-23rd, 2008.

* promotion of the winners by MedGadget and DiabetesMine through articles and blogs, and possibly also feature some of the coolest finalists.

This is a great chance for would be designers to make their mark.

So spread the word.

And don’t forget, the official contest website and rules can be found at Diabetes Mine…

Post from: Healthbolt