PharmD Students Showcase Innovative Products at Annual Shark Tank Event

On December 12, the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences hosted its fifth annual Shark Tank Event for the PHAR 430 Pharmacy Informatics course taught by Armen Simonian, assistant dean and chair of clinical and administrative sciences, in conjunction with PHAR 420 Pharmacy Management taught by Gregory Reardon, associate professor of administrative sciences.

The competition featured 11 teams of students who pitch their pharmacy related app to a panel of judges and ask for fictitious seed funding, similar to the popular television show Shark Tank.

This year, team Notorious B.I.D. won the 2019 competition with its product, the PharmaSEE. The product are educational training glasses that incorporate interactive augmented reality. The glasses’ software is designed to teach healthcare students and professionals in various compounding, IV preparations, and TPN preparations.

The winning team included seven Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) students: Alex Cheung, Joseph Nguyen, Kelly Vo, Monica Torres, Jason Chu, DJ Jefferson, and Kelly Thai.

Regarding feedback from the event, Simonian said: “One of our judges who has participated in all five Shark Tank events at KGI mentioned that there has been an upward trend in the quality of the presentations and the level of innovation, making this year’s Shark Tank our best ever.”

The team Pharmers earned second place with their MedFind product and third place produced a tie between the Alprazopham and Better Health Access teams. The complete product descriptions and team rosters are listed below.

Team 1: Chill Pills

• Team Members: Annie Kim, Anais Sarukhanyan, Kristina Telhami, Lindsey Syto, Mona Poursaleh, Tiffany Bauzon
• Product Name: MyDiaBesties
• Product Description: Diabetes management is more than blood glucose monitoring, MyDiaBesties addresses all aspects of diabetes management to effectively and safely improve health outcomes.

Team 2: Alprazopham

• Team Members: Gabriel Esquivel, Michael Blanco, Nicholas Carreon, Katherine Tran, Nazdar Sulevani
• Product Name: Health-E-Data
• Product Description: Monthly subscription health app and wristband with personalized QR codes that link to customer’s personal health data via our website.

Team 3: Notorious B.I.D.

• Team Members: Alex Cheung, Joseph Nguyen, Kelly Vo, Monica Torres, Jason Chu, DJ Jefferson, Kelly Thai
• Product Name: PharmaSEE
• Product Description: Interactive Augmented Reality (AR) educational training glasses with software designed to teach healthcare students and professionals in various compounding, IV preparations, and TPN preparations.

Team 4: Better Health Access

• Team Members: Christopher Kaldas, Frances Marie Del Fierro, Jovanny Mercado, Sona Khachunts, Sydney Eck
• Product Name: California Health Bank (CHB)
• Product Description: A mobile application that informs underserved patients and communities about free health services and health fairs local to their area.

Team 5: X2

• Team Members: Cynthia Ferreyra, Jeannette Gonzalez, Kacey Egusa, Cassie Lee, Rachel Kim, Carolyn Saba
• Product Name: Independent RX2 ®
• Product Description: A newly innovative system that suggests the most affordable prescriptions to patients regardless of payment choice.

Team 6: Pharmers

• Team Members: Ariga Gregorian, Joshua Liu, Marc Moore, Alice Wong, Diego Salinas, George Morcos
• Product Name: MedFind
• Product Description: The application provides accurate and the most cost-effective economical OTC recommendation with proper directions through a series of questions while offering delivery to the patient.

Team 7: DAW-7

• Team Members: Andrew Nguyen, Ceana Oh, Farzan Haji, Malcolm Richards, Natalie Rhodes, Stephanie Pintado
• Product Name: Pill-Me
• Product Description: Smart medication dispenser to simplify medication management and enhance adherence to the better health of patients.

Team 8: Max Dosage

• Team Members: Alyssa Selve, Bradley Simonian, John Dinh, Maryam Saffari, Narine Karapetyan, Srbuhi Poghosyan
• Product Name: CYPstat
• Product Description: A service that will interpret cytochrome polymorphisms to allow for medication to be personalized to each patient.

Team 9: LANSK Pharmily

• Team Members: Nathen Vega, Larisa Malak Stepanian, Marvin Soriano, Paola Montes, Shahrzad Shirazy
• Product Name: Wris-Q
• Product Description: Wris-Q detects, alerts, and calls 911 and/or other contacts in case of respiratory depression, by detecting patient’s oxygen saturation.

Team 10: Licensed to Fill

• Team Members: Jennifer Tran, Christy Wong, Danielle Le, Rodelle Sacman, Vivek Banapur, Crystal Lo
• Product Name: Compile Spec-Rx
• Product Description: This software aims to provide electronic health record data to specialty pharmacists.

Team 11: Phoodies

• Team Members: Quynh Doan, Maureen Haddad, Roxanne Marquez Arellano, Kristian Tan, Andrew Tran
• Product Name: Drug2Door
• Product Description: Medication delivery service for over-the-counter and prescriptions.