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Did you know that approximately $765 billion worth of overstock medical supplies are disposed of each and every year? It is roughly the same amount as the national GDP of the Netherlands, which all boils down to an unbelievably high number of usable medical supplies just being thrown out. Chloe Alpert became interested in this astonishing and rarely known fact in 2015 after her grandmother was diagnosed with brain cancer. She discovered that the neurology department in San Francisco's Hospital discards approximately $3 million worth of medical surpluses a year, and this is just one department in one hospital. Could you imagine the effect this could have on healthcare costs? It is upsetting when you see people struggling to maintain the cost of their healthcare and trying not to go bankrupt, while medical companies are haphazardly throwing away useable medical supplies.
According to Alpert, “If we could help them monetize merely 50 cents on the dollar, it would add up to an additional $1.5 billion a year in one department, in one hospital. It is not hard to imagine the number of lives that could be saved.”
This is what helped Alpert decide to found her startup Medinas. Medinas utilizes inventory data and matching software in order to enable large hospitals and other organizations to sell their excess medical supplies to nursing homes, clinics and other businesses in the medical industry. The main goal of Medinas is to establish cost savings on both sides of the transactions. Alpert describes her startup as a team of engineers, medical professionals, product specialists and healthcare capitalists that are working together to help reduce the cost of healthcare for all.
On Monday, a group of all star judges awarded Alpert $500,000 to help her and her team pursue their dream. There was well over a thousand young entrepreneurs entered in the Change the World Competition at the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. The applicants were interviewed and prescreened by business students from Boston-area universities, and they obviously liked what Alpert was selling. Alpert earned her spot to go before the judges and was the first one on stage to present her startup to the judges.
The panel of judges included many well known businessmen, including Peter Boyce II from venture firm General Catalyst, Forbes Media CEO Mike Perlis and Ashton Kutcher and his Sound Ventures co-founder Guy Oseary. This would be a hard crowd to sell to; however, Alpert did not seem nervous at all. She did an amazing job explaining the goals and ideas of her startup in front of the group of judges. And, the judges loved her ideas and awarded her $500,000 to help bring her dream to life.