On May 20 and 21st, the 2nd National Medical Students Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum was hosted at the WHU School of Medical Sciences. A total of 15 colleges and universities including Peking University, Fudan University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Central South University and Nanjing Medical University, took part in the forum. Deputy Secretary-General of China Health and Family Planning Association of Ideological and Political Work Wang Huaning, head of Mayo Clinic China Referral Office Qu Wei, Assistant President of Peking University Medical Industry Group Fan Jing, WHU Vice-President Shu Hongbing, Vice-President of WHU School of Basic Medical Sciences Hou Wei and several other distinguished professors and directors from the participating universities attended the forum.
Group photo of the participants
Professor Shu Hongbing on behalf of Wuhan University delivered the keynote address, welcoming all the young talents students to share their innovative researches. He also mentioned that Wuhan University is the first in China to promote the three fundamental principles of educational philosophy: creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Afterwards, Prof. Hou Wei from the WHU School of Basic Medical Sciences, shared some insights into how to set clear goals, to choose the right mentor and above all, to choose a specialized field of study. According to him, interest, dedication and attention to details are what it takes to become a successful medical researcher.
Mr. Qu Wei then presented a brief overview of model and core values of the medical network MCCN in retrospect of the management system of the American medical group in the past 25 years. Mr. Fan Jing talked about the integration of capital and artificial intelligence in the medical industry. Deng Hongbing, Associate Professor of WHU School of Resources and Environmental Sciences, shared some of the successful entrepreneurial stories in the medical industry.
On the first day of the forum, 12 students presented their projects in three sub-forums evaluated by four experts as judges. After each student’s presentation, the judges “peppered” the students with questions but the students confidently engaged in in-depth discussion about their research and ideas.
On the next day, instructors Li Hao, Guo Ruihan and Yang Guohua guided the medical students on the entrepreneurial direction, giving them instructions concerning innovative thinking and entrepreneurial career planning by sharing their personal experiences. Before the closing ceremony, student representatives of the three sub-forum took turns to discuss the results of the discussion.
Zhuang Qiyuan from Fudan University bagged the Most Innovative Spirit Award. Han Mawen from China Three Gorges University won the Best Market Potential Award. Zhao Jingzhou from Central South University won the Most Conversion Value Award. The Outstanding Team Spirit Award was given to the Celp Team from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Fu Donghong, Li Hao, Guo Ruihan, Tang Zhibin, Zhu Yongji, Yang Guohua, Luo Ziqiang and Li Qiao were conferred with the Best Instructor Awards at the closing ceremony. All the participating projects were awarded with 2000 yuan each. The participants then headed to Wuhan Hamilton Biological Technology Co., Ltd and Wuhan Optical Valley Biological City for field visits to examine first-hand the latest laboratory equipment, biological breeding techniques, food safety technology, warehouse and R&D facility.
Medicine is considered one of the most sought after humanistic professions. This forum tries to nurture these outstanding medical talents to introduce new, thought-provoking and pragmatic approaches to medicine. The students developed public entrepreneurship and innovation skills on how to assess product value, to pay attention to patent applications and to look for appropriate business partners. This forum was a unique platform to encourage and support budding medical talents and guide them through the most recent cutting-edge advancement in this discipline.
Here below are some of the experiences and ideas shared by the participating students.
Wang Yumin, Wuhan University
China has a saying called “often come back home”, but many students couldn’t. Due to the relationship between time and fare, parents cannot see their child. The traditional Chinese culture attaches great importance to the family’s emotions. We gradually grow up and parents are gradually aging this time. In collaboration with students from the U.S., we had this simple idea. We compared prices of various ticket booking sites and services and found that actually much of the services are the same. We wanted to earn profit by other means, so we chose a Costco membership model where we can earn profit from a membership fee.
Zhuang Qiyuan, Fudan University
This was the first time I realized that our medical students can also achieve so many creative things, even transforming them into practical stuff. What I’ve done is a quite fundamental scientific research. It is about a quite common disease named focal segmental glomerulosclerosis which presents with nephrotic syndromes and easily leads to chronic renal failure globally. So I focused on a novel signaling pathway called Hippo pathway, which regulates cell proliferation and apoptosis. I appreciate this chance offered by Wuhan University to share my research with so many students.
Tian yuchen, Fudan University
Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis is a disease, clinically manifested as nephrotic syndrome, and its etiology is mainly podocyte apoptosis. Hippo pathway is through the downstream effector protein YAP into the nucleus to play the role of auxiliary transcription factor. I have participated in a similar forum before, which was basically to find ways to let people who are not in this area to understand what we do, how to do this, what’s its meaning and the best result that can be obtained from it. At this forum, I learned from instructors that regardless of age and the path, as long as you are determined to create, innovation would be a small beginning.
Zhang Zhongyang, Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Although many cells are cultured in much the same way, different cells have their specific culture methods and are therefore difficult to imitate by competitors. Cell passing with zero margin cost of “out of nothing”, the project can play a “turning waste into treasure” role. The project avoids the inconvenience caused by cell transport between different regions, facilitating the exchange of information. The Celp team for the first time built a cell mutual aid platform through the Internet, strictly controlling the quality of users within the platform. In this way, users are able to share the type of cells to achieve the platform between users and users of cell sharing, thus helping the majority of scientific research staff to save on research funding.
Liu Qi, Nanjing Medical University
We studied a high-precision automated hand-held pipette metering device design, because in the biochemical or drug analysis experiments, we use pipette but its precision and accuracy is not very good. Our research’s purpose is to develop a small physical examination, which is simple and convenient, and can be automated in the laboratory to complete the pipette metrological verification device. From the experts at the forum, we have learned that innovation should be combined with entrepreneurship.
Wang Ling, Yangtze University
The objective of our research was to detect, compare and analyze the activity and significance of CREB1 protein in the hippocampus of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and wild type control mice. We came to a conclusion that by inhibiting the activity of key nuclear transcription factor CREB1 in hippocampal tissues, D-galactose combined with AlCl3 affects neuronal survival causing the occurrence of AD. At the forum, I learnt that students shouldn’t be shy to express their ideas modestly.
Shao Yining, China Medical University
We tried to use the Internet and cloud computing technology in an effort to build information under the conditions of the health management model, to explore the establishment of the “Internet +” model of health management. We tried to explore the health management model suitable for China’s national conditions, to promote formalization and digitization in this sector. Mr. Qu Wei’s cutting-edge technology combined development model left a deep impression on me, and enlightened me as a medical student to give my best.
Photo by: Wuhan University School of Medicine and students themselves
Edited by: Li Yunzhen, Wu Siying, Edmund Wai Man Lai & Hu Sijia
