The Phill Box®

More than 8 billion plastic pill bottles are dispensed each year in the United States and less than 3% are recycled. Most plastic waste in the U.S. is sent abroad to developing countries for processing– more than 4,000 containers a day— or sent to plastic waste incinerators built in vulnerable communities that perpetuate air pollution and health disparities. In Chester City, PA, where the nation's largest trash and plastic waste incinerator sits, residents have 60% higher lung cancer and mortality rates than the rest of its surrounding county and have the highest percentage of low birth weights in the state. Plastic waste is not only a distant environmental problem for landscape pollution but a current, pressing public health crisis. It is a tragedy to allow medications meant to treat one community to go on to harm another for decades. 

The rare disease community experiences a high medication burden, with many medications and treatments tried and failed over many years. These treatments are often packaged in single-use plastic packaging and create a significant –but involuntary– accumulation of plastic waste. The rare disease patient rarely has a chance to step away from this vicious cycle of plastic consumption in favor of sustainable packaging for their treatments.

Our solution, the Phill Box®, directly addresses the issue of plastic waste in medication packaging. Our product is a regulatory-compliant, recyclable, and biodegradable alternative to plastic pill bottles. It is a highly durable paper-based medication packaging that is water-resistant and humidity-resistant to keep medications safe. From a carbon emissions and energy consumption perspective, our product requires 75% less energy to manufacture and transport and emits 72% less CO2-equivalent emissions throughout its lifecycle. At scale, this is equivalent to removing 89,000 cars off the road every year in the United States. As a paper-based product, it is easily and readily recyclable with existing infrastructure within the United States. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), paper products remain the most successfully recycled material in the country. 

For the first time, with our product, the rare disease patient can choose to step away from perpetuating the cycle of plastic pollution in favor of sustainable and responsible packaging. 

Our solution serves patients who take oral solid medication doses, and this includes the rare disease patient population who, in addition to costly injectable medications, are often on several maintenance solid oral medications for chronic disease management. 

Throughout our product development journey, we continuously engage with patients of diverse diseases to better understand how we can develop universally accessible and appealing sustainable packaging. One of the first innovations of the Phill Box® is our 3-step lock that replaces the traditional push-and-twist opening mechanisms of plastic pill bottles. This innovation makes it easier for patients with arthritis or limited hand dexterity to open the packaging. 

From a pharmacy operations and clinical care perspective, we’ve engineered the Phill Box® to be light and compact to ship and store, and radically expanded the available surface area on the packaging for clinical care visibility. Pharmacies that dispense with the Phill Box® are able to report significant reductions in their emissions reporting, while increasing the visibility of the clinical services and support they provide to their patients. 

Our team at Parcel Health is strongly positioned to deliver this solution because we have a deep understanding of the communities we aim to serve. Our founding team includes both a pharmacist and an industrial designer, and we are both patients who take medications every day. With our respective experiences in our professional field, our passion for keeping the earth free from plastic, and our commitment to improving health equity, we are committed to championing and normalizing sustainable packaging in healthcare. 

Our cofounder and CEO, Melinda Su-En Lee, brings her personal experiences as an immigrant and a pharmacist to the table. She has seen the devastation of plastic waste in her community back in Malaysia, witnessed the challenges faced by patients in using and organizing their medications, and also experienced the fast-paced workflow of pharmacies. This proximity to these stakeholders allows her to design a solution that takes into account the priorities and concerns of each of the communities that the product touches. 

Meanwhile, our cofounder and President, Mallory Barrett, brings her experience in product design, development, and leadership to the table. She was awarded the 2017 Cradle-to-Cradle Product Design Challenge for a reusable stainless steel medication bottle that laid the foundation for the work we do here at Parcel Health. She has deep and extensive experience in physical and software product management that catalyzed our product development at Parcel Health from concept to commercialized product within 2 years. 

The Horizon Prize offers a unique opportunity to share our product, the Phill Box® and our vision for normalizing sustainable packaging in healthcare with the rare diseases community. We hope that by sharing our story and vision with your community, we can gain additional stakeholders that will champion sustainable packaging throughout the supply chain of medication delivery. 

Additionally, winning the non-dilutive single prize of $150,000 would help us scale our manufacturing operations and enhance our coating technology to further improve durability. The non-dilutive aspect of the prize will also help us keep our company majority women-owned instead of selling our stakes to raise this early capital. 

As a woman and an immigrant, Melinda understands the struggles and vulnerabilities faced by underserved communities. In every city she has lived in, she has actively engaged with community organizations serving vulnerable young children and youth. 

At Parcel Health, she advocated for creating jobs for convicted ex-felons, single parents, and those in active recovery. Currently at Parcel Health, our manufacturing facility hires without regard for ex-felon status and housing status. We encourage employees to bring their young children with them to work and also allow employees to come in early or stay late to use the office Wi-Fi to complete schoolwork. 

Melinda's firsthand experiences and cultural background enable her to empathize with the unique needs and challenges of different local communities. She ensures that our project of building Parcel Health as a genuinely good company is rooted in creating stability and prosperity for all. 

Our flagship product, the Phill Box®, is a 100% curbside recyclable and biodegradable alternative to standard plastic prescription bottles. It features a 3-step toddler-resistant lock that is easier for the elderly to use than traditional push-and-twist locks on orange pill bottles. It is constructed with a coating blend that provides our packaging with water-resistant and humidity-resistant properties, all while adhering to USFDA food safety requirements. It is manufactured entirely in the United States and is competitively priced against plastic bottles, making it an easy-switch for pharmacies across the country. 

Our product has the potential to revolutionize not only plastic prescription bottles but also over-the-counter generic drug packaging and manufacturer-packaged branded drug packaging. By creating an easy product for pharmacies to adopt quickly and easily, we are normalizing sustainable packaging as the new standard of care. 

Our impact goals for the next year and the next five years are centered around transforming the medication packaging landscape. Over the next five years, our impact goals are:

1. Global Adoption and Expansion: We aim to have the Phill Box® become the preferred choice for medication packaging in pharmacies and healthcare institutions globally. Through scaling manufacturing and lowering the cost of production, we want to expand our reach within the United States and beyond to substantially increase the number of patients that can benefit from our sustainable and user-centric solution, while lowering waste burden in those communities. 

2. Improved Medication Adherence and Outcomes: We strive to enhance medication adherence by ensuring that our packaging design facilitates an easy understanding of medication instructions and safety information.

3. Create Good and Local Jobs: As we grow, we aim to create and maintain good, high-paying green manufacturing jobs for the overlooked and underserved within our community. Our goal is to create jobs that can continue to foster economic resilience and social equity.
   

Several indicators we will use to measure our progress: 

1. Global Adoption and Expansion:

Indicator: Number of pounds of plastic waste diverted from landfills as measured by plastic bottles replaced by the Phill Box®. Measured by sales of Phill Box® by sector (pharmacy or manufacturer), region, and country.  

2. Improved Medication Adherence and Outcomes

Indicator:  Pharmacy star-rating improvements for medication adherence after adoption of the Phill Box®. We will also track and report on studies completing head-to-head comparisons of plastic pill bottles compared to the Phill Box® in adherence, impressions, and outcomes. 

3. Target: Create Good and Local Jobs. 

Indicator: Number of new jobs added. Average hourly earnings of female and male employees, by position, age, persons with disabilities, qualified IV-A recipient, ex-veteran status, or ex-felon status. 

Full-time: 2 

Part-time: 4

Contractor: 4

3 years 

We are a B2B business and we sell our products directly to pharmacies across the country and internationally. Pharmacies purchase our product in bulk, recurring volumes. 

Our product is currently commercially available for sale. It is currently available in over 24 independent pharmacies in the United States and 4 pharmacies in Canada. Most recently, we started a paid pilot with University of Michigan's outpatient pharmacy. To achieve profitability and financial sustainability, we have a robust plan to scale manufacturing in order to land larger contracts. With economies of scale, we will be able to reduce our cost of goods sold, pass on the savings to customers, and simultaneously achieve mass adoption that can provide meaningful global environmental impacts. 

Parcel Health, Inc. has been funded by a mix of grants, state-funded venture funding, private investors, and venture funding. To date, we have raised slightly more than $700,000 in funding (dilutive and non-dilutive). With less than $1M in total funding, we were able to get from product concept to product commercialization within 3 years. This includes our success in filling patents to protect intellectual property and low-cost marketing efforts to secure sales.