PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island Business Plan Competition 2008 has named its three winners.
In an announcement made at Business Expo 2008, sponsored by the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, the $170,000 contest picked a company that helps track patients who have gone missing, a developer of technology to help save severed body parts for subsequent re-attachment and, for the first time, a high school student who is developing an online video game that incorporates learning.
MissingPatient.com was the winner of the entrepreneur track in the competition. As part of winning, the company – led by Timothy Holmgren of Westerly – will receive $54,500 in cash and in-kind services from contest sponsors. The start-up has developed a procedure for quickly gathering information needed by medical professionals, police and private citizens to help find missing people, such as those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
The winner in the student track was Siren Medical, founded by Mark Drew, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. Also receiving the $54,500 in cash and services, Siren Medical is developing low-cost technology to help preserve severed digits and limbs at accident sites for transport to surgical facilities.
The winner of $1,000 in the new high-school student track was David Litwin, a junior at The Wheeler School in Providence, whose company, D-Liteful Gamin, is combining economics and business in an online sports video game.
“We received more applications and a greater variety of plans than ever before in the five competitions we have held since 2001,” said Competition Co-chair Garrett B. Hunter, president of the Business Development Company of Rhode Island. “The quality of the plans was extremely high, and the judges felt all the semifinalists had good business ideas that they should actively pursue.”
Finalists in the competition were named yesterday, and for the first time, they will receive prizes as well. A total of $15,000 will be distributed among the four semi-finalists in the entrepreneur and student categories: Vitrimark (entrepreneur), which is developing technology to make early detection of prostate and breast cancers; Replicator (entrepreneur), which manufactures custom costume jewelry; CHMR Solutions (student), a Brown University project that removes heavy metals from contaminated ground; and Digital Wingman (student), a Brown team that integrates 3D floor plans with e-commerce.
Hunter also thanked the 35 sponsors and judges “for their commitment to making the Rhode Island Business Plan Competition the most prominent community-sponsored competition of its kind in New England.”
Fifty-eight proposals from six states and four countries were received for the competition, which required winners to agree to establish or maintain operations in Rhode Island.
Additional information on the Rhode Island Business Plan Competition 2008 is available at www.ri-bizplan.com.
