The grand prize winner and two other category winners of West Chester University’s seventh annual Business Idea Pitch Competition shared the theme of developing technology to benefit people’s health and safety.

Judges agreed that the most viable products at the competition were a portable mat to detect when a person falls, a system incorporating a wearable device to monitor stress and use of medicine, and a lifesaving CPR mat.

The TailWin! Bike Light won the Chester County Startups category.

The grand prize winner was also the winner in the track for WCU graduate students, alumni, faculty, and staff: Alfred Bedell, Alice Bedell, Franklin Chukwu, and WCU’s Susan Gans, professor and assistant chair of the psychology department. Their innovative U-Check-It is an integrated non-invasive health monitoring system that tracks stress and opioid usage in real time. This wearable device will allow prescription opioids to be dispensed only as directed. It will also be able to monitor a person’s stress levels.

From the West Chester University undergraduate track, nursing major Hally Everett and computer science major Jacob Neubaum won first place for Slip Saver, a portable mat that uses embedded-sense technology to determine if a person has fallen. The students plan to target assisted-living environments, where Slip Saver will alert healthcare professionals and reduce response times when a resident stands on or falls on the mat.

The winners of the Chester County high school track were Alana Pappas and Julia Hirs for CRLA, a Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Lifesaving Assistant mat to assist with CPR. The mat will provide feedback so that even individuals untrained in CPR can follow CRLA’s instructions and perform CPR correctly and at the proper pace for adults, children, and infants.

For the first time, there was an invitational track to the Business Idea Competition in which two student-teams from Beijing Union University presented. The first-place team was Free Yourself from Queuing, an application designed to facilitate maximum enjoyment when you visit an amusement park.

This year’s pitch event was sponsored by Meridian Bank (Host Sponsor) and Univest (Gold Sponsor). The Seventh Annual Business Idea Competition was co-hosted by the Dr. Edwin Cottrell Entrepreneurial Leadership Center, the Keiretsu Forum Mid-Atlantic, and The Greater West Chester Chamber of Commerce.

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