Next week Iowa City, Iowa-based startup TelePharm will head to Washington D.C. for the 2013 mHealth Summit, which bills itself as the largest global event of its kind focused on mobile health solutions.
The telemedicine software startup will be one of 30 companies to take part in the summit’s Innovation Zone, giving founder Roby Miller the chance to share his product with more than 5,000 attendees, from health care providers and investors to fellow entrepreneurs from 60 countries. 
“We are thrilled for TelePharm to be recognized on a national level,” Miller (right) said in a press release. “The team has been working hard for the past year and this affirmation of their efforts is well deserved. The summit will help us connect to hospital executives and investors and will broaden our partnerships with other mHealth companies.”
Originally the startup—which celebrated its public launch early this year—focused exclusively on connecting pharmacists with pharmacies and their patients, especially in under-served communities such as rural Iowa towns, where a traditional pharmacy may not be sustainable. However, Miller says that early in the new year, the startup plans to expand its vision and launch a new platform that will allow for remote delivery to additional areas of the medical community.
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“Telemedicine has always been on our product roadmap,” Miller told Silicon Prairie News. “We decided to build it sooner than we expected because of the demand and opportunity in the market.”
In October 2012, Miller and Iowa governor Terry Branstad opened the state’s first telepharmacy in Victor, Iowa, which has a population of just fewer than 900. More recently, TelePharm was awarded honorable mention at the eighth annual John Pappajohn Iowa Business Plan competition in September.
Now with five full-time and two part-time employees, TelePharm plans on hiring a number of new employees come January. With 11 operating telepharmacies in Iowa, Illinois and Texas, Miller says the company is adding about three or four new telepharmacies a month, and plans to expand to Wisconsin, Indiana and Minnesota in the first quarter of 2014.
Credits: Roby Miller photo from GooglePlus.
