EPFL students teamed up with startup IcosaMed to develop the SmartBra – the first piece of smart clothing that can be used for cancer prevention.
“Our smart-clothing technology is designed to detect cancer at the earliest stages. It uses a non-invasive, painless method based on frequent ultrasound monitoring,” says Hugo Vuillet, one of the students on the development team. The students came up with their design during a Master’s-level class called Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Engineering, which was run for the first time last fall.
The class is given jointly by the School of Engineering and the College of Management of Technology and aims to expose students to the challenges entrepreneurs face as they develop new products. Student teams worked closely with local businesses to develop a marketable product that meets a need identified by the company they teamed up with.
The SmartBra student team – composed of Vuillet as well as Fatemeh Ghadamieh, Samet Hana and Jules Pochon – obtained the highest score and received an award from a selection panel made up of EPFL professors. Their system proved so effective that the company they worked with, IcosaMed, a Neuchâtel-based startup founded in March 2019, decided to continue the partnership.
Source: “A smart bra for detecting early-stage breast cancer”, Leila Ueberschlag, EPFL News
