Four students from the University of Jember (UNEJ) have achieved outstanding success on the international stage through two innovations in the fields of health law and medical therapy. In the 4th International Youth Conference, organized in collaboration between the Asia Pacific Student Association and Nanyang Technological University at the end of June 2026, the team successfully brought home three prestigious awards.
The first innovation, proposed by Dhimas Hardi Nugraha (Pharmacy), along with Dyah Rahmadhani Saraswati, Rafidah Nurul Inaya, and Linda Dwi Perwita (Medicine), is a digital reporting system to protect patient rights. This platform is designed to address various administrative hurdles, discrimination, and service quality issues in healthcare facilities by transparently connecting patients, hospital management, the government, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
The main advantage of this system lies in its accountability aspect, which involves NGOs as an independent third party. If a legal or service complaint is not followed up within a certain timeframe, the NGO will step in directly to mitigate the issue, ensuring that the rights of both patients and medical personnel remain protected and receive a concrete resolution.
In addition to focusing on the health law system, this team of UNEJ students also developed a genetic technology-based therapy for nasopharyngeal cancer using Fusogenic Nanovesicles (FuNV) T-Cells. This method is designed to target cancer cells specifically without damaging the surrounding healthy cells, offering significantly fewer side effects compared to conventional chemotherapy or radiotherapy.
Thanks to these two breakthroughs, the team won a Gold Medal in the Law & Economics category and third place in the essay competition for the patient rights reporting platform. Meanwhile, the idea for the nasopharyngeal cancer therapy won a Silver Medal in the health category. This digital-based human rights protection concept even received special appreciation from the international panel of judges, who hoped that the project would soon receive funding for real-world implementation.
Team representative Dhimas Hardi Nugraha hopes this achievement will motivate other students to dare to compete at the global level. According to him, international events are the best way to measure one's capabilities, broaden horizons, and create real solutions that directly benefit the wider community.
