Y-Prize 2023 winners Equimeter have won the the Jacobson Social Impact Prize at Wharton Venture Lab’s annual startup challenge. This prize awards $10,000 to the entrant whose business model best addresses inequities or societal challenges.
Early this year, Equimeter won the grand prize in the Y-Prize competition for a proposed commercial application for Penn’s physics-informed neural network that improves pulse oximetry in patients with darker skin. Inaccurate pulse oximetry leads to poor health outcomes for darker-skinned patients, a problem that came into sharper focus during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As Y-Prize winners, Equimeter automatically jumped to the finalist round of Venture Lab’s startup challenge. This university-wide competition spotlights student-founded new ventures at Penn. Teams pitch their business models to a panel of entrepreneurial alumni, competing for funding in the form of prize money. Equimeter were among the runners up, and earned special distinction for their proposal’s attention to social impact.
Last year, Y-Prize winners Ossum Technologies won the Audience Choice award in the startup challenge. To learn more about Venture Lab and the Startup Challenge, click here.