The Application of Innovation
In 2014, the school received a historic $100 million commitment—the largest gift from an individual in UNC’s history and the largest gift ever made to a pharmacy school in the United States. The gift from Fred Eshelman, who graduated with a B.S. in pharmacy from Carolina in 1972 and went on to the University of Cincinnati to earn a Pharm. D., created the Eshelman Institute for Innovation. The institute is pursuing high-risk, high-reward ideas that advance education, pharmacy practice and healthcare.
For the Next Generation: Advancing Education
Our latest innovation, nXhuman, is a 3D virtual patient care learning platform that enables students to gain virtual experience before seeing real patients. Built with state-of-the-art gaming technology, the virtual patient will increase students’ confidence and competence, better preparing them to care for real-life patients. The tool integrates artificial intelligence to enable students to ask questions and provide responses, review electronic health- care records, order virtual lab results, and present findings and treatment recommendations to ultimately increase their ability to reduce medication errors and accurately predict patient outcomes.
Accelerating Impact
One of the strategic initiatives of both the University and the school is to radically increase the pace of helping our people who have entrepreneurial ideas with commercial promise or the potential for societal impact obtain patents and launch start-ups. To nurture the entrepreneurial spirit of our most creative thinkers, we have expanded our ability to support technology and product development, and established a micro-incubation space for faculty-founded start-ups.
