Emanuele Musini, a serial entrepreneur, knows how to turn a tragedy into an uplifting business. When his father, who struggled with medication nonadherence, passed, Musini felt compelled to focus on improving people’s health.
“My father had problems remembering to take medication,” says Musini, founder of Pillo. “I noticed there wasn’t a good way to track if he’s taken it or not. I had friends in the tech world, so I put together a strong team of roboticists and have been working on Pillo for a year and a half. We spent a lot of time designing the product and testing it.”
What is it?
Pillo is a home robot that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to empower people, both young and old, to take care of their health. This ultimate caregiver is also your Google search engine, fitness coach, nutritionist, nurse, and doctor in one. It even recognizes your face and can remind you of your daily schedule if you ever forget.
“What makes Pillo special is it’s not just a pill dispenser,” says Musini, a WeWork Soho West member. “Pillo is the healthcare platform every family should have. Through it, you can access services that you might only be able to find in hospitals and connect with doctors who can see your health data. It also supports answers to healthcare questions.”
Pillo launched an Indiegogo campaign and has reached over 120 percent of its goal of $75,000.
Who’s on the team?
What makes the team unique is their backgrounds. Musini has experience in the marketing and food industry. He founded his first business, an artisanal food gift-sharing platform, and soon started his second company, Tartufi di Fassia, a world-renowned producer of Italian truffle products. It was so successful that he moved to New York in 2008 to open a distribution company. In 2013, he sold the company and took a new direction: creating a robot that helps people manage their own health and those of loved ones.
South Africa native James Wyman lived in London and Rhode Island before moving to New York to work at Morgan Stanley. With experience in finance, he helped raise pre-initial public offering money for Michael Kors. After dedicating his time to helping private companies raise money, he created his own private capital market. His business savvy side helps the team set financial goals and achieve them.
Pillo’s third co-founder, Aiden Feng, is a physician with a dual degree in business and medicine from Harvard. And his contacts in Boston have helped the startup get pilot programs and introductions to investors started, Wyman says.
The engineering team is based in Genoa, Italy and led by two professors at the University of Genoa who specialize in robotics, cloud systems, artificial intelligence, and software development.
How will it change the world?
Pillo is poised to be the smart robot of the future, serving the health needs of your household in an unobtrusive yet ubiquitous way, both in the home and on your wrist or back pocket. The team plans to build apps and create its own app store to ensure that information from Pillo can easily sync with wearable devices, smartphones, and even alert your physicians about your vitals on a dashboard before your appointment.
“We’re creating a holistic picture of health that no one else can picture, and why we need an intelligent robot you can proactively engage with living in your home,” Wyman says.