The Texas Heart Institute Electrophysiology Clinical Research & Innovations team led by Dr. Mehdi Razavi competed in the prestigious national Create the Future Design Contest and won the Medical Category. The winning entry, A Chip Off the Old Box: Painless Defibrillation, highlights technology in development to treat cardiac arrhythmia, which has a tremendous impact on individuals worldwide.

As the number one cause of sudden death and stroke, arrhythmias can be devastating, and they are also a leading contributor to congestive heart failure (CHF). Devices can be used to shock the heart back into normal rhythm, but this can be extremely painful, leading to PTSD in a high proportion of patients.

The technology in development is a collaboration between the Texas Heart Institute, Rice University, and UCLA. 

For the past 18 years, Create the Future has been the premier engineering design competition and has proven to be an excellent opportunity for labs, universities, and companies of all backgrounds to reach new potential partners and licensees. Hundreds of thousands of technical professionals and executives visit the contest website annually. Since its inception, the contest has attracted over 15,000 entries from over 100 countries. Many of these technologies have been put to practical use, improving the economy, environment, quality of life, and public health and safety.

The entry was selected as a finalist from the over 750 submissions Tech Briefs received this year from 60 countries. Tech Briefs recruits a minimum of 24 judges from its editorial board of readers to judge the prestigious contest each year.

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Keri Sprung