February 15, 2023 – HemaChrome, a digital health startup that uses smartphone technology to noninvasively and instantly measure blood hemoglobin levels, has won phase 1 of the National Institutes of Health’s RADx Tech for Maternal Health Challenge.
The technology was developed by Young Kim, HemaChrome’s founder and chief science officer. Kim is a professor and associate head for research at Purdue University’s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. He also is a Showalter Faculty Scholar and University Faculty Scholar at Purdue. Huiri Kim is HemaChrome’s CEO.
During phase 1 of the challenge, HemaChrome received a cash prize and was vetted by NIH’s panel of scientific, medical and business experts for technical and commercial viability. Because it won, HemaChrome will have access to NIH’s in-house and in-kind support to speed the development, validation and commercialization of its technology.
HemaChrome meets twice a week with the NIH RADx team of experts as part of the process to proceed to phase 2 of the challenge.
Young Kim’s research about this technology has been published in several publications and peer-reviewed journals, including the November 2022 issue of Blood and the June 2020 issue of Optica. He is preparing additional papers and conducting ongoing clinical studies.
HemaChrome has received support from the U.S.-Korea Conference Startup Pitch Competition and the 2020 NIH Technology Accelerator Challenge. The company also has received support from Purdue Innovates and licenses technology through the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization.