Students turn vision into reality with medical phone case
What started as a midterm project could be on its way to revolutionizing the way people transport emergency medications.
Senior biology major Samuel Graska, said emergency medicine is something that he has always been passionate about, and the project just sparked the idea.
He contacted fellow students Ariella Yager, a senior entrepreneurship major, and Justin Gleason, an architectural and environmental design graduate, and thus the “founding three” were born.
“I, myself, have asthma and I watched my cousin go through a severe attack without his inhaler,” Graska said. “This product is exactly what he needed. It would have been perfect.”
Their project, Case MD, is based on the foundation of combining emergency medicine into the convenience of everyday technology. The products can be stored directly in the smartphone case for convenience.
The birth control case, Alula, and epinephrine case are the team’s primary focus at this point. Graska said he looks to incorporate an inhaler version in the near future.
“Bootstrapping a company is expensive,” Yager said. “We are planning to launch the Kickstarter in April of this year, and hopefully have the product on the shelves by August.”
The team said the Kickstarter will be very millennial-based, offering a variety of unique rewards if you fund the project.
“We want to make it a story,” Yager said. “It’s going to be fun, we already have some locations picked out that we’re going to film at.”
The team wants to show not only their advocacy for emergency medication, but also for being healthy and hygienic as well.
“Our target market is college women,” Graska said. “They are our biggest advocates, our champions if you will.”
The trio plans to collaborate their cases with a pre-existing app that will remind the user when it is time to take their medication.
There are two concerns about the safety of the product: the early release of the insulin needle and heat from the phone impacting the medicine.
“There are two safety measures that need to be taken before the needle can even be released,” Graska said. “As for the heat aspect, we are investing in a stronger form of polymer that will contain the amount of heat put off by your phone.”
The safety of the product will undergo rigorous testing through the Food and Drug Administration before it can be regulated and enter the market.
Nicholas Kotch is the consumer tech reporter, contact him at [email protected].