Founded by New Orleans graduate students, startup Instapath Bioptics has won the 2017 International Business Model Competition (IBMC), which is organized by Brigham Young University, and held in the heart of Silicon Valley. With rapid, high-quality imaging, Instapath aims to improve how tissue biopsies are processed to increase pathology efficiency and reduce repeat biopsies for patients awaiting cancer diagnoses. The startup, which was founded by three doctoral students and one faculty member at Tulane University, received a $30,000 grand prize after advancing through several rounds and beating out 38 other teams selected for the competition.
Held annually since 2012, the IBMC is sponsored by the Kevin and Debra Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology in Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management. It is open to student innovators enrolled at academic institutions anywhere in the world, and over 5,000 student teams from more than 500 schools applied to compete in this year’s event. Cash prizes totaling $130,000 were awarded at the competition.
Instapath has recently won several other local business competitions, including the Tulane Novel Tech Challenge and the Cox Business Get Started Louisiana event. Winnings will support the company’s development of a new health software and imaging solution that improves the process of evaluating tissue biopsies to diagnose cancer. Instapath’s technology ensures that a high-quality tissue sample has been taken. This is done with significantly more accuracy than current techniques, helping clinicians reduce the frequency of inconclusive diagnoses and decreasing how often patients must undergo painful, repeated biopsy procedures. The company is working with numerous partners including Tulane and the New Orleans BioInnovation Center to move the technology forward.
“We are honored to be named the winner of this prestigious event, especially in a field with such strong competitors,” said Instapath Co-Founder David Tulman. “This prize will help us accelerate testing of the new platform in partnership with several major cancer centers in Louisiana and New York so we can get it approved for widespread use in hospitals within the next few years.”
This year’s IBMC final event was held over several days at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Cal. IBMC emphasizes the importance of entrepreneurs generating testable hypotheses about their innovations and speaking directly to potential customers to get feedback on the path forward for the new venture. This feedback can provide important validation that a new business has real potential to scale up and grow successfully.