IOWA CITY, Iowa--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Emerging health IT start-up HealthTech Solutions has been accepted as a finalist in the Rice Business Plan Competition, the world’s richest and largest student start-up competition awarding over $1 million annually to student entrepreneurs with the most promising technology-enabled company.
HealthTech Solutions is developing innovative technology to make organ transplant communication more efficient and effective. Organ transplant is a complicated, time-sensitive process that relies on hundreds of phone calls and faxes per donated organ. This inefficient communication contributes to over 50 percent of available organs going to waste; meanwhile, 22 patients die each day in the US waiting for a life-saving organ; over 120,000 people continue to wait for a major organ transplant, and the average wait time is over five years.
This year, there were nearly 1,000 applicants vying for 42 invitations to this prestigious competition. HealthTech Solutions, which is affiliated with the University of Iowa John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center, will be represented by co-founders Dalton Shaull and Eric Pahl at the event April 6-7 in Houston, Texas.
“Dalton and Eric launched the company with a passion to transform organ transplant with new technology,” says David Hensley, Executive Director of John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center at University of Iowa. “Dalton was a victim of a near-fatal motorcycle accident and received an experimental transplant at the Mayo Clinic as a result. Eric has four family members on the liver transplant wait list. This connected purpose is a powerful driver for these two tenacious entrepreneurs!”
The Rice Business Plan Competition is hosted each year by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship. This is the 17th year for the competition. In that time, it has grown from nine teams competing for $10,000 in prize money in 2001, to 42 teams from around the world competing for more than $1.5 million in cash and prizes. In 2016, more than 750 applications were submitted. 161 past competitors have gone on to successfully launch their businesses and are still in business today, with another 15 having successful exits. These companies have raised in excess of $1.2 billion in funding.
