Eva Roy (left) and Anjana Murali (right) at the 2020 Randall Family Big Idea Competition Semi Finals
Question: What do you get when you put 2 Yelpers in medical school?
Answer: An invention?!?!
You probably didn’t see that coming. And the truth is, we didn’t either. We’ll explain. But first, let us introduce ourselves. Hi! We are Anjana and Eva. We are 3rd year medical students at Pitt Med and we are also the co-founders of PENY, the Patient Experience Navigator.
We became friends in undergrad and quickly bonded over our love of food, science, and Pittsburgh skylines. Eva was already a Yelp elite at this point, but she quickly convinced Anjana to download the app and start writing Yelp reviews. Writing Yelp reviews was initially just about the food. But we soon started reaping the benefits of the crowdsourcing feature. Whether it was learning about a cool restaurant from the Yelp community or giving good food recommendations to our friends, we realized the power of giving real-time feedback. We saw restaurants change up menus based on our feedback. We saw star ratings spike up for businesses that we kept promoting. Was it really that simple? If everyone gave constructive feedback for things that needed improvement and expressed gratitude for things that were already awesome, could Yelp really elevate the food scene in the ‘Burgh?
We love food! #Yelp
We didn’t have a chance to reflect on that question too much because #medschool. We both decided to study medicine at Pitt Med, which of course meant more study dates and yelping. But this time, food provided us some respite from our hectic schedules.
One time, when we were studying together (and eating take out), we got to talking about what excited us about medicine. And we both simultaneously said “the patients.”
As we train in the hospitals as medical students, we get to interact and perform exams on patients every day. And it is alarming to us how alienating the patient experience can be. Studies show that over 50% of hospital experiences are negative experiences. And problems such as loneliness or micro-aggressions can have long-lasting impacts on patients’ mental and physical well being. We may just be medical students—the lowest on the totem pole when it comes to the care team—but we have the time and energy to advocate on behalf of our patients.
Us during our first medical experience in college (Summer 2015)
So we decided to do something about this! We co-created a product called PENY (the Patient Experience Navigator app). PENY is a real-time patient experience platform for patients to input their experiences and for the hospital to act on them in real time while patients are still in our care. Our goal with PENY is to provide patients with a platform to advocate for themselves. Simultaneously, PENY holds hospitals accountable for enforcing patient-centered care. Our motto is simple: real time analysis for real time results. We are currently in the process of conducting a pilot study with the PENY prototype and we hope to turn our prototype into a reality that can truly improve patients’ health in the hospital setting.
Our logo!
What did it take for us to get this point? A lot of hard work and a great deal of mentorship. After the development of our idea, we realized we needed funding and help in bringing it to reality! We started with completing First Gear in the summer of 2019 through the Innovation Institute. This 8 week program was critical in laying the foundation for the business framework and mindset for PENY as we both come from a very research-oriented, science background. Our biggest takeaway from this program was the importance of customer discovery!
Okay 1 summer done. Are we entrepreneurs yet?
Turns out we had a lot of passion for PENY, but not quite the expertise to turn our idea into a reality. How were two medical students supposed to gain traction in a field that required so much experience? The answer was actually simpler than we thought and more impactful than we could’ve ever imagined! The secret to entrepreunership is actually all about mentorship. The mentors that entered our lives through the Innovation Institute, Big Idea Center, and Pittsburgh community have incredibly rich backgrounds and real world knowledge. They helped us (and continue to help us) navigate a field that we have limited exposure to as medical students. Early mentors especially are critical as they support you when you might not even believe in your idea anymore and can help anticipate next steps before you do.
We're big fans of the 412, especially the skylines!
Don’t get us wrong. Entrepreneurship isn’t always sunshine and roses. During those first few months, we had people tell us our idea would never work. That we might as well give up on our dream before we wasted too much time and energy into a product that hospitals would never invest in. Of course we turned to some of our mentors for their advice—Would we make it? Should we keep going? Would they tell us to stop before it was too late? And our best mentors said, “Do you believe in PENY?” And it was in that moment that we realized our idea was only as good as the faith we put into it. Yes, entrepreneurship is about the problem and solving an unmet need. Yes, your customers dictate a lot of the decisions you make. But at the end of the day, the business requires a lot of hard work and passion, and if the people behind the idea don’t believe in it, then the journey stops being fun and starts to become a burden.
Because of how much we believed our patients deserved better in the hospitals and because of how much our mentors believed in us, we decided to keep going. Luckily, the gamble paid off. We competed in the Kuzneski Cup and won 2nd place in the fall of 2019. During the school year, we continued to work with Paul Petrovich from the Innovation Institute for Second Gear. In the spring of 2020, we got involved with Big Idea Blitz, won 4th place at the Randall Family Big Idea Competition, and most recently completed the Blast Furnace student accelerator! The mentorship at the Big Idea Center from John Seiffer to Don Morrison to Kelly Collier have been crucial in guiding our pitch presentations and product development in the right direction.
Filming our video round submission for the 2020 Randall Family Big Idea Competition
Looking forward, we will be participating in the Forge student incubator and conducting a pilot study this fall in UPMC. We would not be where we are today without the guidance and support from our mentors at the Innovation Institute and the Big Idea Center. The biggest piece of advice we could give to future entrepreneurs is always say yes to a meeting! You never know what you will gain from it whether it be guidance, connections, or the ever so important customer discovery!
It’s been 1 year since we dreamed up the idea of PENY. And wow, what a year it has been! While we initially lagged behind in our business skills, the Innovation Institute & Big Idea Center quickly caught us up to speed. In the meantime, our medical and research backgrounds served us well as we channeled our analytical brains to help us perservere through obstacles we faced in designing PENY prototypes and pilot studies. And all the while, our trusty Yelp app kept our brains fueled as our newly programmed entrepreneurial minds forced us to keep thinking outside of the box!
Eva with Don Morrison and the Kuzneski's
Medical school has had its ups and downs, but the scariest part for us was taking a leap of faith into our entrepreneurship journey. With an idea like PENY, you invest so much time and energy without ever knowing if the gamble will pay off in the end. But the journey is really a lot of fun and you meet the coolest people along the way, so we 100% recommend the experience to anyone who is up for the challenge. If anyone reading this has even the smallest flicker of an idea that could possibly shake up the world, here are our parting words for you: believe in your dream no matter how much it scares you, put in the work (yes, this includes all those hours of customer discovery!), find people who believe in you, and the results will follow!
Best of luck,
Anjana Murali and Eva Roy
Connect with us!
Anjana Murali Eva Roy
Twitter: @amurali327 Twitter: @eroy105
Email: anm225@pitt.edu Email: evr16@pitt.edu