SmartyPill: A Group Project Turned Award-Winning Smart Pill Dispenser
Approximately 50% of patients do not take their medication as prescribed, 69% of which is due to forgetfulness, according to the Mayo Clinic. With this in mind, Matt Swenson, Oscar Chen, and Christian Kuss, all students at Northeastern University, used their freshman year engineering course at Northeastern University as an opportunity to found what would eventually become SmartyPill.
SmartyPill is an intelligent pill dispenser that manages, dispenses, and keeps track of one’s medication, so the user doesn’t have to themselves. SmartyPill has a corresponding phone application, as well as customizable alerts, making it a perfect in-home companion for any medication adherent lifestyle. SmartyPill is currently a B2C product, with hopes of eventually adding a B2B software — integrating with hospitals and pharmacies.
Swenson claims that while he and his groupmates all had a passion for the idea, they never predicted SmartyPill to be more than a group project. That all changed, however, when Swenson went to hackster.io and submitted the project to the China-US Young Makers Competition, hosted by Google, in 2018. The project was selected as one of 75 finalists, and the team was flown to Beijing, China, to compete against other top products and ended up placing in the top 25 out of over 2000 entries.
The success of the Summer of 2018 spurred the group into action, as they took the opportunity to continue to work on and develop SmartyPill in the following year. In the Fall of 2019, SmartyPill joined Generate, Northeastern’s student-led product development studio for entrepreneurial engineering. It was while working at Generate that Thomas Keith, another Northeastern student and software engineer, worked with SmartyPill and was so interested that he decided to join as the fourth member of the team. “Things really took off for us in the Fall of 2019,” said Swenson. Along with Generate, SmartyPill also went through the Husky Startup Challenge, a startup pitch competition hosted by the Northeastern University Entrepreneurs Club each semester. Lastly, SmartyPill became a client of Scout, Northeastern’s student-led design studio in the spring of 2020.
The passion and spark of success that led SmartyPill to join Generate, HSC, and Scout also brought them to IDEA, Northeastern’s student-run venture accelerator. Swenson felt confident about the product and his team’s ability to continually improve on the design and concept, but felt that IDEA could provide a new perspective.
“I felt as though we were missing a lot of the other skills, background, and context that you really need to make a business, and IDEA would help provide that” said Swenson.
Currently, SmartyPill is designated as a Set-Stage venture. In this stage, ventures focus on building their business model. Swenson believes that the most helpful factors from working with IDEA so far have been the structured, streamlined process as well as the mentors. Greg Dobeck and Brian Gong, both experienced mentors, have worked with SmartyPill during their time at IDEA. Their value has been primarily helping with general business advice, as well as translating what can sometimes be confusing business terminology into understandable information for the SmartyPill team.
Currently, the team is working on its fifth prototype, focusing on hardware design and accomplishing the task of universally dispensing the pills. The current goals for SmartyPill include reaching the Go Stage with IDEA by the Spring of 2021 and applying for Gap Funding.
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