11.25.19
Remember DeLury and never forget medication: Company creates innovative packaging
By Doug LeDuc, Fort Wayne Business Weekly
How would you describe DeLury Enterprise?
Its DeLury Enterprise Dispenser uses innovative medication packaging with added security to make the medication patients take every day safer and more effective.
The DeLury Enterprise dispenser gathers information about how well the medication is taken by patients to allow those patients, people who care for patients, doctors’ offices, pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and business that do research to make more informed decisions.
Where did you get the idea for the business and how did you start it and bring it to this point in its development?
Watching my aunt take medications multiple times when only one dose was prescribed and having to call emergency response made it clear a better way to manage medications was needed. I researched different possibilities. The innovative packaging was an improvement, however it lacked security.
To relieve the stress of taking care of my aunt with dementia I walked 5 miles around Syracuse Lake every day. This gave me plenty of time to nurture the idea for the product currently being developed.
By chance, I saw a segment on the locally produced “INsight” that profiled the Northeast Indiana Innovative Center and the help it offers entrepreneurs. Since my initial contact with the NIIC, it has been a two-and-a-half-year process of trial and error, networking, seeking advice and mentoring.
I am currently working with The Workbench of Fort Wayne, the Parkview Innovation Program, the NIIC, the Women’s Entrepreneurial Opportunity Center and the Fortitude Fund.
I am a part of the current Masterminds Program at WEOC, Elevate Origins, and will participate in the Purdue & Midwest NSF I-Corps program starting in January 2020, all while working full time.
My aunt is currently in assisted living. I have plans to bring her back home in the spring when she turns 100 years old. A dispenser such as this would make it much easier to manage her medications.
What is the next important step in the development of the business and what is ahead for it?
The next step in development is pre-seed funding for Intellectual property protection ($6,000 by the end of December … yikes!), production ready prototyping, app development, integration with medical software, database development, advisory committee and board establishment, branding, and securing office space, equipment, travel expense funding and professional memberships.
This is just the beginning … but true entrepreneurs have fortitude and grit!
