Waterloo pharmacy students launch startup to stop costly drug waste

A shared co-op challenge has inspired three University of Waterloo pharmacy students to create a solution to reduce medical waste and save pharmacies thousands of dollars.Despite working in different community pharmacies across Southern Ontario, Zainab Rashid, Ishan Singh and Noah Spitzl all experienced the same time-consuming challenge during their co-op work terms: finding new homes for expensive biological medications before they expired.“We all spent hours calling other pharmacies hoping one of them would take the medications, so it wouldn’t go to waste, and so that our pharmacy wouldn’t take on a great loss,” says Rashid.Inspired by this shared experience, the students created Relio—an innovative platform to connect pharmacies, helping them redistribute expensive, time-sensitive medications.Biologics are medications derived from living organisms such as proteins, cells or genes, that are used to treat complex diseases including autoimmune disorders, cancer and chronic inflammation. They can cost between $500 and $25,000, have short expiry windows and cannot be returned to suppliers, placing significant financial risk on pharmacies.After their co-op experiences, the students learned about different biologics in their Integrated Patient Focused Care course during their next term, and gained further insights into the growing problem within the industry.“Without pairing co-op with our coursework, we probably wouldn’t have been in the right mindset to recognize a real-world problem and develop a solution,” Spitzl said.To get started, the team conducted extensive research into the idea, connecting with 30 pharmacies for feedback, opinions and ideas to refine their product.“We really wanted to centre pharmacies across Ontario, so our product could fit seamlessly into their workflow, reflecting the actual needs of the pharmacists,” said Singh.Through Relio, the team aims to create a network for pharmacies to share inventory and improve access to care while combating unnecessary medical waste.Winners of the 2026 Pharmasave Business Competition, the team received $5,000 in funding to further develop the platform. The annual competition challenges third-year students to turn co-op insights into real-world solutions and has already helped launch multiple student-led ventures.“Every year, we see a cohort of students developing new ventures who prove that pharmacists make excellent entrepreneurs that can solve very real issues in our healthcare system,” said Dean Pacey, adjunct lecturer at the School of Pharmacy. “Our class focuses on developing skills associated with the entrepreneurial mindset—how to think and act like an entrepreneur when tackling problems—which can be applied in any pharmacy setting. These are the skills that employers now expect from Waterloo graduates and that our healthcare environment so desperately needs.”Moving forward, the team is working to further develop their website, ensure the platform is user friendly, easy to navigate and streamlines pharmacy workflow. They plan to expand Relio to support additional medications, improving access to pharmacies across Ontario and Canada and to unify them, giving them a shared way to help one another with excess inventory.Learn more about past winners here.Milana Madzarac is a communications officer for the University of Waterloo. This article is republished from the University of Waterloo’s School of Pharmacy news site.

Waterloo pharmacy students launch startup to stop costly drug waste

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