If you didn't know, Minnesota is a global powerhouse in medical innovation. Our universities, combined with the world's largest players in medical device and technology, attract talented physicians and entrepreneurs who come to Minneapolis wanting to play a roll in improving lives, globally.
That's how Nicole Pardo and David Amor, CEO and COO of Remind Technologies, met. Both were Innovation Fellows at the University of Minnesota's Medical Device Center, which is a one year intensive program bringing together physicians, engineers and business professionals to develop medical device IP and other concepts.
I met with them at the Northeast product design firm - Worrell, Inc. - to learn more about their story.
Reed: So David, how did Remind Technologies come to be?
David: Nicole and I, along with our other Fellows, were approached by transplant surgeons from the University of Minnesota regarding issues they were having on getting their patients to adhere to their medication schedules. After further exploration, we discovered that this issue was costing the healthcare industry an estimated two billion dollars a year. Furthermore, none of the solutions out there targeted a key aspect of medication adherence that we felt was critical to taking medications - actually having the pills on you in the first place.
The use of a smartphone as a "central server" that acts as pillbox, tracking software and healthcare-provider-communication-tool was a natural step towards solving this problem. In May of 2013, we formed Remind Technologies with the goal of becoming the medication adherence program of choice for healthcare providers and patients. At that time, we began working on our first device - the MindRx - which is a smart pillbox that connects to a smartphone and dispenses, records, tracks and monitors the patient's medication consumption.
Reed: Great idea! So, where are you at?
David: We recently graduated from the inaugural class of the Health Tech Wildcatters accelerator in Dallas, TX. That program gave us a crash course in the start-up lifestyle, along with exposure to our first investors. It was a fantastic experience, marking a significant advancement in our product and business development activities.
Reed: Cool. Where do you see Remind one year from today?
David: In one year, we expect our MindRx device to be available in several key care organizations. To do that we're working on initiating pilot trials at Texas Health Resources and Johns Hopkins University to further validate our technology.
Reed: Very exciting. Best of luck to you both!
David and Nicole will be demoing their MindRx prototype concept at next week's Beta.MN - 1.0 event. Having seen it, I can assure you that it is very impressive; they are too. Tickets are still available. Grab yours before they run out.