Local Entrepreneur Wins Big At Under 30 Summit Change The World Competition
By Melony Roy
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Forbes hosted the largest-ever competition for young social entrepreneurs at the Under 30 Summit this week, and a West Philly native won the top prize.
Kiah Williams competed against five other social entrepreneurs at the Summit… and won.
"I envision a world where no one is sick," she says, "because they can't afford their medicine and there are too many people right now who are ending up in the emergency room, hospital, and jail, or are just unable to work because they don't have this basic human right which is healthcare"
Williams co-founded SIRUM (Supporting Initiatives to Redistribute Unused Medicine) along with two other Stanford grads Adam Kircher and George Wang in 2011.
"We realize there is an estimated $5 billion of unused medicine going to waste every year in the United States,"she says. "Where if you look at the flip side of access to medicine, there's somewhere around 50 million people who report not being able to fill their prescription drugs due to cost."
SIRUM has been described as the match.com of medicine. Using an online platform, it connects facilities that serve low-income patients with inventories of unused, unexpired prescription medications.
"If a healthcare institution like a nursing home or pharmacy has surplus they can bar-code scan in the meds on our platform and see exactly where they can donate the medicine to. We have a network or donors and a network of clinics"
Williams was the day's big winner with $500,000 grand prize, but the other five finalists received $100,000 each for making it to the final round.
"I think next up for us is planning for 2016," Williams says, "to add-on a couple more states and really continue to grow and scale this program so it can be national."
SIRUM is based in Palo Alto, California but Williams would like to bring the program to her home state.
"There are 40 states that have Good Samaritan Laws on their books that allows this type of medial redistribution to happen and Pennsylvania isn't one of them right now" she explains. "I would love to have a conversation with the state legislature if they're interested in figuring out how to get this program to work in Pennsylvania."
For more info about SIRUM click here.
