Announcing the First Recipient of the
Loka Innovators Award
Loka and Stanford Biodesign
created the Loka Innovators Award
to accelerate standout digital
health solutions.
Backing Stanford's
Brightest Innovators
Loka and the Stanford Mussallem Center for Biodesign have launched the Loka Innovators Award—an initiative created to give Stanford’s most promising digital health innovators a faster path from insight to real-world impact. By giving Stanford students, faculty and fellows access to Loka’s rapid prototyping and user-driven product development, the award enables a faster path from identifying unmet medical needs to building testable, investor-ready solutions. The goal is simple—speed up the journey from concept to care so patients can benefit sooner.
And the Winner Is
Team Onyx!
The inaugural Loka Innovators Award drew an exceptional response across Stanford, with more than two dozen inspiring submissions. From this field, Team Onyx, comprised of Bingyi Wang, PhD; Jonathan Freise, MD; and Sophia Brodsky, BSN, RN, emerged as the inaugural winner. The team stood out for tackling a pressing unmet need in urology: chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CPPS). Affecting up to one in six men in the U.S., CPPS remains underdiagnosed and often misunderstood. Onyx aims to change that.
Thank you to every team who applied and to our four finalists for raising the bar. We’re especially grateful to our judging panel of Ryan Van Wert, MD; Michelle de Haaff; Barrett Larson, MD; Richard Gaster, MD, PhD; and Bobby Mukherjee for their time and thoughtful evaluation. We're also grateful for the support from Stanford Biodesign, especially Lyn Denend, Linda Lucian, Awo Addo and Daniela Rodriguez Martinez, for making the first year a success worth repeating.
"As a mentor at Stanford Biodesign, I've seen amazing projects that would benefit from prototyping and feedback. We developed this award to help the Biodesign community deliver improved healthcare outcomes faster. Our goal is to catalyze brilliant minds to change the landscape of healthtech for the better."
From Award to Prototype
As winners of the Loka Innovators Award, Team Onyx from Stanford Biodesign worked together with Loka to transform their concept into a digital product.
Team Onyx recognized that men living with CPPS face fragmented treatment, limited access to specialized care and a lack of digital resources that address both the physical and emotional sides of recovery.
Together we ran an intensive, in-person Design Sprint at Stanford, mapping user journeys, identifying gaps in care and rapidly prototyping a dual-platform solution for therapists and patients.
Guided by
Physical Therapists
Building on the extensive user research conducted by the Stanford Biodesign team, including interviews with men living with CPPS, the group focused on turning those insights into actionable design.
During the Design Sprint they worked closely with a physical therapist, validating key pain points and shaping how the digital experience could better support clinicians and patients. These insights guided every design decision, ensuring the solution felt human, supportive and grounded in real needs.
The Solution:
Two Connected Apps, One Purpose
Patient Companion App
A mobile app that helps men follow a personalized treatment plan, log symptoms, and track their progress over time. Built with empathy and guided by AI-powered recommendations to support real-world recovery.
Physical Therapist Platform
The patient portal is paired with a web app that enables physical therapists to manage their patients' needs, assign tailored exercises and monitor progress all in one place.
"We feel extremely grateful and honored to receive the Loka Innovator Award. It’s given us the chance to take our initial idea and turn it into a usable prototype that helps us validate our hypotheses, understand what the market needs and see how patients benefit from it."
The Next Award Is Coming
The Loka Innovators Award recognizes digital health projects that address a compelling unmet need. They can be pure software (app/web) solutions or combine hardware and software. Applicants must be committed to advancing their projects beyond the course or program in which they originate.
For details about the 2026 Loka Innovators Award, visit the link below.
