Philly New Technology Meetup #38 - June 2017 - BioTech, XPRIZE Basil Leaf

We're once again partnering with the Maker Meetup on a BioTech makers event. This special event is not on our typical 3rd Wednesday, but on the 2nd Tuesday.

5:00 Networking and food, Maker showcase
6:15 Welcome and sponsors
6:30 Guest speaker: Dr. Basil Harris with Zack Seward, moderator
7:15 Q&A
7:30 Community discussion followed by Networking
7:45 Happy Hour

The program begins at 5:00 with a one hour, table-top Showcase featuring DxtER and other great Philly biotech innovators.

At CES in 2012, Qualcomm (https://www.qualcomm.com/?cmpid=brfyus1714343)and the XPRIZE Foundation (http://www.xprize.org/) launched the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition (http://tricorder.xprize.org/). They challenged the world's creative geniuses to devise a portable, wireless device weighing less than five pounds, that could accurately diagnose 13 health conditions, while monitoring 5 real-time health vital signs, all in a minimally invasive fashion. But they went even further by insisting that the device work in the hands of a consumer (independent of a professional healthcare worker or facility).

On April 12th, after five years of intensive competition from a field of more than 300 teams (including entries with backing from major companies and governments), Qualcomm and XPRIZE announced their winner: Philadelphia's own Final Frontier Medical Devices (newly incorporated as Basil Leaf Technologies (http://www.basilleaftech.com/)). This small self-funded team, led by engineer-turned ER doctor, Basil Harris (and his brother, George) won the top prize of $2.5 million - with the promise of additional underwriting to follow from Qualcomm and its partners, including The Roddenberry Foundation (http://www.roddenberryfoundation.org/).

https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/b/f/7/3/600_460549011.jpeg

Basil M Harris, MD, PhD, FACEP

Dr. Harris is the founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Medical Officer for Basil Leaf Technologies.

Basil is a physician with a PhD in engineering. He has been actively practicing emergency medicine for over fifteen years, spending the last twelve at Lankenau Medical Center. For the third time in 2016, Dr. Harris was once again named an ER Top Doctor (http://www.mainlinetoday.com/Main-Line-Today/December-2016/Top-Doctors-2016/) by Main Line Today.

Despite his daily regimen of chaos in the ER, his engineering training is ever present. Basil’s years at Drexel University (Master of Science) and Cornell (PhD, Materials Engineering) hardwired him to think like an engineer and he is a constant tinkerer. He received his medical training at the Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. Dr. Harris has research experience in medicine and engineering with over a dozen publications.

He and his co-founder, George Harris, are brothers who grew up in the Philadelphia region.

Zack Seward, moderator

Zack is Editor-in-Chief of Technical.ly, the local technology news network. Previously, Seward was the Innovations Reporter at WHYY and NewsWorks.org in Philadelphia. Before that, he worked at WXXI in Rochester, N.Y., as a reporter and editor for a statewide public radio reporting project. Seward is an alumnus of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. He's originally from San Francisco and went to college in Chicago.

Sponsored by Duane Morris (http://www.duanemorris.com/attorneys/richardlcohen.html), EisnerAmper (http://www.eisneramper.com/), Kopelman Foundation, and Ben Franklin Technology Partners (http://www.sep.benfranklin.org/).

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