Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine (SOM) held its sixth annual entrepreneurship competition known as Med Tank, where the first-place prize of $500 went to a proposal by the name of StickRX.

The StickRX team is composed of three Rowan students: Megan Steckler, a graduate student studying for a master in business administration (MBA), Shruti Dalwadi, a first-year SOM student, and Raya Shamilov, a business student from Drexel University. Steckler had received an email over winter break encouraging MBA students to participate in Med Tank. Though she only had some experience in the medical industry, Steckler thought signing up for Med Tank would be a good way of testing her pitch skills.

“I’ve also had the experience of all these creative people, innovators across campus, come to my job and pitch their ideas, and I’ve seen it grow and seen what people are able to do, so I wanted to challenge myself, see if I could actually do it, put my money where my mouth is, and connect all these different things for me,” Steckler said.

Steckler reached out to Dalwadi looking to see if she was getting involved in the competition, and Dalwadi invited her to join the team. After accepting the offer, Steckler also reached out to Shamilov after having previously met her at a different event. As Shamilov went to a different university out of state, a lot of the team’s meetings took place over Zoom, where they spent hours meticulously crafting the perfect pitch.

“I really enjoyed taking a break from studying and thinking of solutions to gaps in medicine,” said Dalwadi. “It gave me a chance to look beyond clinical medicine and explore what else is out there or could be done.”

StickRX is a smart sticker powered by a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) with the purpose of providing reminders for people who are on medication about when to take their next dose. The product is used by attaching the sticker to a medication container, primarily a bottle or tube. StickRX would also come with a remote that would allow the user to set a specific time that they would need to take their medication.

The remote would be connected to the sticker so that when the time comes for the user to take their medicine, the sticker will ring or buzz. StickRX would come in packs of 10, and the remote would be labeled 1-10 so that each sticker could be set for a different time. The remote would also be small enough so that users of StickRX could take it with them anywhere they go, especially if they’re away from home long enough that it would require them to bring their medication with them.

All three members of the StickRX team had their own ways of contributing to the project. Dalwadi knew most about the medical aspects of the pitch as it was her initial idea, Steckler knew most about the business aspects of the pitch, and Shamilov knew most about the finances and costs that their pitch would need to include.

Though Med Tank was simply a means for students to craft their entrepreneurial skills, the members of StickRX have shown an interest in taking their pitch even further.

“Rowan has a lot of entrepreneurial resources, I know that firsthand because I work there, so we’ve actually been reaching out to specific faculty and getting their input and I also had to pitch our idea post-competition to a panel of our entrepreneurial advisory council at my job, and they were able to give us some good feedback and give us connections if we wanted to take this further as well,” Steckler said. “Rowan has this program called I-Corps. It’s new, and it helps entrepreneurs build out their idea more and see where they can take it, so we’re thinking about participating in that.”

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