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Student Competition Reveals Drug Dispensing Kiosk

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If kiosk success was like a recipe, what would be the perfect ingredients?

A student competition to find new and exciting ideas for a sensational kiosk took place last month at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, United States.

The contest, dubbed Whiteboard Challenge by Coinstar, involved several teams that presented kiosk concepts to a panel of university professors and Coinstar executives.

The winning team DrugBox was crowned the victors as they were judged on the kiosk idea, business case and presentation.

Their drug-dispensing kiosk came top and won the $6,000 prize money. Runner up entrants was awarded $3,000 and $1,000.

Gregg Kaplan, president and chief operating officer of Coinstar, said: “We were delighted with the level of creativity and depth of thinking that the students brought forward.

“We believe there are countless untapped ideas in the automated retail space, and with anticipated self-service retail transactions expected to reach $1.6 trillion by 2013, we want to continue fostering new ideas.”

DrugBox, the winning kiosk initiative, was designed by David Schottland, Sheila Schottland, and Raphael Tse which involved a self-service kiosk that would be pre-stocked with non-vital, high-demand, prescription drugs.

Advantages to the unit included;

– Speed, convenience and discretion. Traditional long waiting lines at pharmacies will be a thing of the past as well as embarrassing situations with personal information.

– Help fill scripts and answer drug-interaction questions.

– Speed up the payment process with insurance providers and remind people to refill or pick up prescriptions.

– Substantial revenue opportunity as the US prescription drug market in 2009 was roughly $300 billion.

– Bettering patients would cut the overall cost of health care in the country.

Desired locations the kiosks could be deployed are said to be 24-hour convenience stores, petrol stations and office parks.

The challenge’s runner up ideas consisted of a kiosk that brings together buyers and sellers of used merchandise and an energy-drink kiosk.

Find new and exciting kiosk ideas at Protouch; Europe’s number one manufacturer and distributor of Touch screen technology.