About our project
The problem we solve: Medication non-compliance in the US causes approximately 30%-50% of medical treatment failures, results in ~125,000 deaths annually , and has an estimated direct cost of $300 billion . This is largely because managing one’s medications can be a difficult task. Current methods of managing medications have the following drawbacks. Time Consuming: For people who take multiple pills, weekly tasks of organizing and sorting pills can be very time consuming. Costly: Many so-called “smart” devices can cost hundreds of dollars and are cost prohibitive for consumers. No Feedback: There is currently no way for caregivers, healthcare providers, and insurance companies to know if patients are taking their medications correctly. Poor Design: For most of the healthcare industry, people are treated as patients before people, and that is reflected in the design of medical devices. People feel stigmatized when using these products and as a result do not use them.
About our solution:
EllieGrid is an intuitive and effective device that reminds users when it is time to take their pills and tells the user which and how many to take. EllieGrid allows users to organize all of their pills in seconds no matter how many pills a user takes, is portable, can gather compliance data and has an empowering design that will make users want to interact with the product.
As seen in the image, each compartment in EllieGrid is full of one type of pill. This allows for easy refills. You simply take the bottle and pour the pills into the correct compartment, thus taking 30 seconds to organize all of your pills instead of 30 minutes. Whenever it is time to take certain medications, an alarm will ring and lights in the corresponding compartments will come on. The number of lights that come on for each compartment determines how many pills to take out of each compartment. Once medications have been taken, EllieGrid will record the medications as “taken”.
Progress to
date:--Pre-release prototype ready in one month
--Extensive market research consisting of over 400 interviews
--1st place winner of IBM Health Hackathon, AlphaLab Gear Hardware Cup, and St. Edwards University Business Plan competition
--Finalists in the CVS Health Competition, IOT World Cup in Barcelona during Mobile World Congress and many more.
--Generated interest from future customers that have over 2,000 patients that could use EllieGrid
About Our Team
Creator: Abe Matamoros
Education: University of Tulsa
Bio: Experience as entrepreneur, and consultant for investors and other entrepreneurs. Abe’s background is in finance and economics. He was also the captain of an NCAA D1 soccer team, and played soccer at a professional level.
Title: CEO
Advanced Degree(s): Economics and Finance
About Team Members
Hieu Nguyen
CTO, Masters in EE from USC and currently working on Masters in CS at Georgia Tech
Biography: Skills in firmware, embedded systems, IoT, and mobile app development. Hieu has 3 years of experience working at TI as a systems engineer. Currently pursuing a graduate CS degree from Georgia Tech.
Title: CTO
Advanced Degree(s): Masters in EE from USC and currently working on Masters in CS at Georgia Tech
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hieuminh
Nic Dhanam
CPO, Mechanical Engineer
Biography: Strong knowledge base in engineering science, computer software, and design engineering. Classically trained ME with experience reducing costs in aerospace manufacturing. Extensive CAD/CAM experience and Design-for-Manufacturing knowledge.
Title: CPO
Advanced Degree(s): Mechanical Engineer
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ndhanam
Regina Vatterott
COO, Entrepreneurship
Biography: Experience as an entrepreneur and as an online marketer for thousands of independent pharmacies. Regina has spoken with thousands of people that struggle with medication management and knows exactly how to target the market.
Title: COO
Advanced Degree(s): Entrepreneurship
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginavatterott
About Our Company
How We Help Patients
EllieGrid's value proposition is simple. By providing users with a product that has a beautiful design, and makes medication management easier, Elliegrid empowers users and helps them take control of their health. As a result, people will be more likely to to take their medication as prescribed and live healthier happier lives.
How We Help Physicians
Physicians want to help their patients stay healthy. One of the biggest reasons why patients are re-hospitalized is non-adherence. By providing their patients with an EllieGrid, doctors can help them stay healthy by helping them stay compliant.
How We Help Hospitals
Hospital are not reimbursed by the government if a patient with certain conditions returns to hospital within 30 days. Insurance companies' highest preventable cost comes from non-adherence. It is estimated that the direct cost of non-adherence in the US is about $300 billion. EllieGrid can help lower costs by helping patience adhere to their medication regimen.
How We Help Partners
EllieGrid is the first company that wil be able to provide actionable analytics based on adherence data. This data can be used in many differnt ways by many different types of organizations. For example, research institution looking to decrease medication adherence could use our data to learn more about the problem and help prevent it. We could also potentially use machine learning in order to predict when someone is going to miss their medications before it even happens! If you are interested in learning more about how you could use compliance data to help improve healthcare, please do not hesitate o reach out.
Challenge Mission
Market Size
There are currently no products in the market that make the medication management process effortless and empowering. By providing depression patients with a solution that will increase medication adherence, EllieGrid will improve depression care.
Projected 3 Year Growth
Untreated depression increases the chance of risky behaviors such as drug or alcohol addiction. It also can ruin relationships, cause problems at work, and make it difficult to overcome serious illnesses. As a result, if a patient with depression does not comply to their medication regimen, there can be serious consequences. This is where EllieGrid comes in! However, when it comes to people with depression keeping them compliant is about more than just reminding them to take their pills. Since Depression affects mood, and thoughts, its important that EllieGrid makes the user feel better about themselves. This is why we put so much importance on design. Our goal is not to be a medical device. Our goal is to be a fashionable accessory that just so happens to saves lives, because users are people before patients and people enjoy things that look nice. One example of how we use design to make users feel good is by doing a little light show every time a users take their medication.
How We Will Make Money
In phase one, we will sell EllieGrid directly to consumers via our website, other online outlets and television. At 10,000+ units, the cost of EllieGrid will be $25, and we plan on selling it for $99. In phase two, once we have shown traction in our direct to consumer model, we plan on selling to healthcare providers that can provide EllieGrid to their patients in order to track their compliance data. Healthcare organizations will pay an estimated $4-$10 monthly fee per user in order to receive actionable analytics. Additionally, we will charge an estimated $10,000-$20,000 monthly fee for outside access to our anonymized data.
About our Competition
There are 4 main types of competitors. Bellow are the competitors along with their drawback that we do not have.
1. You have the "smart" weekly planners that takes my aunt 30 minutes to organize and cost $60/month.
2. The "smart" pill bottles that cost $70 plus a monthly fee. It is expensive to have multiple bottles and a hassle to carry them around.
3.The $900 dispensers that are like having R2-D2 on your kitchen table.
4. The mail delivery services that have a high cost of customer acquisition because patients have to change to their pharmacy, can't gather compliance data because they come in a cardboard box, and are inconvenient considering the fact that, if the patients regimen changes halfway through the week, they have a box full of medicine they can't use.
Innovation Details
Intellectual Property Summary
We filed the provisional patent last year and will file the official patent shortly.
Clinical Information
Since we are finishing up product developement, we have not been able to do studies on EllieGrid's effectiveness. However, we do not plan on doing formal clinical trials, so none of the funding will go to that.
We are a class one medical device so we do not have to go through the FDA approval process.
Regulatory Status
In regards, to FDA, the main thing we need to worry about is that we use safe materials to build EllieGrid, and we have that taken care of.
How we will use the funds raised
If we win the Grants, we would use the funding to build the EllieGrid molds. We plan on raising, up to $500,000. This will get us to launch and allow us to finalize product developement, cover slaries, cover manufacturing, cover marketing, cover administrative costs and cover other unexpected costs.
Thank You
EllieGrid's mission is to help people live healthier and happier lives by providing them with products that enhance personal empowerment through design and improved health management. Now that we are finlizing product developement, we need your help to take EllieGrid to the next step and help us get closer to accomplishing our mission. Please join us in helping the millions of people who struggle with non-adherence by supporting our campaign.
Thank You,
EllieGrid Team
