The winners of the Pharmasave Industrial Case Study Competition pose with their sponsor. From left to right, Billy Cheung from Pharmasave, Jaspreet Sahota, Robyn McArthur, Caitlin Meyer, Nicole Seymour and Peter Rempel. (Photo credits: Chandan Vatish, UW Photography Club)
On May 15, 2013, the second annual Business Awards Ceremony was held to recognize and celebrate the innovative spirit at the University of Waterloo, School of Pharmacy. Dr. Roderick Slavcev has designed an award-winning Pharmacy Business Curriculum that offers elective courses as well as extracurricular activities to complement core business courses offered at the School of Pharmacy. The Pharmacy Business Curriculum aims to cultivate pharmacy students with invaluable strategic management skills to lead entrepreneurial endeavours that will transform health care challenges into solutions. The Scotiabank Pharmacy Entrepreneurship Competition and the Pharmasave Industrial Case Study Competition are examples of 2 components that make up the comprehensive Pharmacy Business Curriculum.
The Scotiabank Pharmacy Entrepreneurship Competition aims to motivate ambitious students to apply their entrepreneurial ideas to transform a blueprint of a novel business venture into an innovative health care solution. After reviewing the business plan submissions, 3 teams were invited this year to deliver a presentation on their business plan to a panel of judges from diverse private and public sectors. The panel of judges selected one remarkable venture that received the $15,000 prize ($11,000 cash; $4000 in-kind professional services) sponsored by Scotiabank and Scotia Private Client Group with professional services, provided by Gowlings and KPMG. The winning venture for this year’s Scotiabank Pharmacy Entrepreneurship Award was Synergy Community Pharmacy Solutions, a business venture that aims to deliver customized and innovative consulting business services to community pharmacy practices through a collaborative approach. Synergy Community Pharmacy Solutions was developed by a team of individuals from unique backgrounds in pharmacy practice and business marketing. Members of the winning team include Dave Hughes, a 4th-year pharmacy student at the University of Waterloo, School of Pharmacy, with pharmacy work experiences across various settings, including a hospital, a pharmacy consulting agency and a community pharmacy; Nick Malian, a 4th-year pharmacy student at the School of Pharmacy with over 7 years of experience in community pharmacy; Hilary Jackson, a young professional in the digital marketing industry, who has an Honours Sociology and Communications undergraduate degree and a postgraduate diploma in Marketing; and Jesse Selles, who has an undergraduate degree in Psychology and Business Management.
The Pharmasave Industrial Case Study Competition is also the capstone of PHARM 350: Fundamentals of Business Administration and Management, which accounts for 30% of the students’ final grades. The 3rd annual Pharmasave Industrial Case Study Competition provided 21 teams of pharmacy students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the case entitled “New Pharmacy—Where Healthcare Interfaces Innovation” over the course of 12 days, with the aim of delivering a 7-minute pitch and a business proposal on a health care‒based venture to a panel of judges from a range of health care and business backgrounds. The recipients for this year’s Pharmasave Industrial Case Study Competition award, Caitlin Meyer, Nicole Seymour, Robyn McArthur, Peter Rempel and Jaspreet Sahota, also received $5000, which was generously sponsored by Pharmasave. They proposed an outstanding venture, First Class Pharma, which works to provide efficient travel health care services that entail on- and off-site vaccinations and consultations through an interprofessional collaborative approach among health care providers.
Today it is more important than ever before to find innovative ways to deliver quality health care in order to not only respond to but thrive in a rapidly changing health care system. The Scotiabank Pharmacy Entrepreneurship Competition and the Pharmasave Industrial Case Study Competition provide the young leaders of tomorrow with an opportunity to take a risk to evolve their business ideas into health care solutions in a setting that fosters growth, innovation and passion.
—Elisabeth Huang, Roderick A. Slavcev
School of Pharmacy
University of Waterloo