Stories & Updates

Three teams in Horn Entrepreneurship’s 2026 Summer Founders pre-accelerator program are working to bridge the gap between generalized clinical treatment and the need for personalized, patient-centered care.

From reimagining essential medical equipment to integrating vital sign monitoring into everyday jewelry, these student founders are proving that the most effective innovations often start with a deeply personal understanding of the challenges patients and individuals face daily. This is an article in the series highlighting the teams participating in the 2026 Summer Founders program. You can meet them at this year’s Demo Day.

Technology is often designed for the "average" user, but in healthcare, one size rarely fits all. Whether it is the stigma of medical equipment fitting into a home setting, the gap between annual doctor visits and continuous health monitoring, or the urgent need for personal safety tools in social environments, the traditional medical and safety landscape often leaves significant human needs unmet.

Safe Sip

Mackenzie Frank, BS in Entrepreneurship, class of 2027

Safe Sip is a social impact venture addressing the prevalence of drink spiking by developing discreet, reliable safety solutions. Recognizing a critical gap in the market for protective measures that do not disrupt the social experience, founder Mackenzie Frank is working to normalize drink safety in the same way society has embraced common safety protocols like seatbelts and helmets.

The venture began after Frank identified the limitations of current market offerings, which often feel "loud," unsightly, or impractical in social settings. "The problem with current solutions is that there's no real discreet and reliable way to detect whether your drink has been spiked," Frank explained. "Imagine being on a first date, thinking someone spiked your drink, and pulling out a test strip to dip your straw in it. It’s extremely awkward; no one is actually doing that."

Safe Sip gained significant early momentum through participation in Hen Hatch in December 2025, where Frank placed as a finalist. This experience provided the professional backing and validation necessary to rapidly scale her learning and creative output.

Building on that foundation, and through the intensive customer discovery process of the Summer Founders pre-accelerator, Frank has executed a strategic pivot. She is now focusing her immediate efforts on developing silicone lid covers, while treating the original color-changing straw concept as a long-term research and development project.

“Through the 11 weeks of the program, I hope to establish a clearer direction for the prototyping process," Frank explains. "Developing the color-changing straw and taking it through FDA approval will likely take a few years, so for now, I plan to build the straw behind the scenes as a long-term journey, using social media to bring our audience along from the lids to the straw."

To date, Frank has conducted nearly 300 customer interviews, a process that has been both professionally informing and personally challenging. "Honestly, there have been times where listening to the stories of the people I interview has really affected me," she shared. "It’s hard to hear what people have been through, knowing that this is what I’m up against and what can happen out there. I feel a level of responsibility for the people I talk to because I genuinely want to make a difference for them."

As she navigates the complexities of the anti-spiking space, Frank credits the Horn Entrepreneurship ecosystem—and specifically the collaborative nature of the Summer Founders cohort—for providing the mentorship and technical connections necessary to scale.

"I've always been a big advocate for socioeconomic change and real-world problems," Frank said. "I keep telling myself that if I keep working on this and it ends nowhere, but I helped one person feel better about sharing their story or helped one person not get spiked, I would be happy. It's really fun to go through the steps of being an entrepreneur."

Healing Ivy

Sophia Small, BS in Human Services, class of 2026

Healing Ivy is a design-focused venture aiming to transform the home infusion experience by reimagining the clinical IV pole as a lifestyle object. By replacing sterile, hospital-grade equipment with thoughtful, aesthetic designs, founder Sophia Small is working to ensure that medical necessities blend seamlessly into a patient’s personal living space.

The venture was born from Small’s own experience as a patient. After receiving a standard stainless steel IV pole for home treatments, she found the "flimsy," cold industrial design clashed with her environment and underscored the clinical nature of her illness. When she realized the market for home-specific healthcare equipment had remained stagnant, she decided to initiate the change herself.

"There's very little innovation when it comes to that," Small explained. "Why don't they have more things that really fit the home environment? I decided to kind of go into that and make that happen myself."

Currently, Healing Ivy is deeply engaged in the customer discovery phase, moving toward early product envisioning and prototyping. Through extensive interviews with patients, caregivers, and home-health workers, Small is uncovering the varied challenges of home infusion, such as mobility issues, tipping risks, and the need for better bag placement. These insights have led her to a key strategic realization: a "one-size-fits-all" model will not suffice.

"There's a lot of positivity in the diversity, and I'm envisioning different products rather than just one," she noted. "I feel like a lot of times when I talk to people that are older, they'll have a very different relationship to their IV pole than someone that I talk to who is younger."

Small is currently using the resources and support of the Horn Entrepreneurship ecosystem to bridge the gap between her vision and functional reality. After participating in programs like VentureOn, she secured a spot in the 11-week Summer Founders cohort, where she has found a collaborative community of peers navigating similar challenges.

Small shares an especially strong connection with the fellow entrepreneurs in her cohort. "I really clicked with a lot of the people in the cohort very quickly, and it's just a group where we all help each other a lot," she said.

For Small, the project is a convergence of her academic background in human services and her personal journey. By creating solutions for a community she understands intimately, she is focused on long-term impact rather than just the end of the summer program.

"It's my own community that I'm really interacting with here," Small said. "It's a community that I think that I can really connect with emotionally. If I can look back and I can see that I really grew something from this, that would be amazing."

Insuvo

Insuvo is a health-technology venture dedicated to putting actionable health insights directly into the hands of patients. Leveraging their backgrounds in biomedical engineering, founders Rachel Tran and Somin Park are developing discreet, wearable health monitors designed to look and feel like luxury jewelry rather than clinical equipment, allowing users to track vital signs—such as blood pressure and heart rate—without the stigma associated with medical devices.

The founders were initially inspired to solve health-monitoring challenges after witnessing the physical and emotional burden of managing chronic conditions. However, through the rigorous customer discovery process of the Summer Founders pre-accelerator, the team executed a strategic pivot. They realized that while the market is saturated with diabetic management tools, there is a significant gap in accessible, non-invasive monitoring for other vital signs.

"As a woman, I care about my health, but I don't want to have to wear some techie gadget. I don't want to wear something bulky and unsightly," Tran explained. "We’re putting health into the patient's hands rather than depending on a clinician or having to wait six months to schedule an appointment."

The venture addresses a critical global health need: approximately 1.4 billion people worldwide suffer from hypertension, and nearly half are unaware of their condition because they only measure their vitals during rare, annual clinical visits. Insuvo aims to bridge this gap by providing continuous data, which is particularly vital for vulnerable populations, including the elderly and pediatric patients.

"Our biggest obstacle is validation, because statistics don't tell the whole story," Tran noted. "We need to understand how these issues are actually affecting human lives and what the lived experience of our patients is really like."

To overcome these challenges, Tran and Park have embraced the "24/7 grind" typical of engineering students, focusing heavily on getting out of the building to speak with clinicians, nurses, and patients. Their proactive approach has seen them visiting hospitals and clinics to gather firsthand accounts of clinical settings and patient pain points.

"We are constantly reminded of the importance of networking and engaging directly with our target audience," Park added. "Even though we have a strong grasp of the technical problem, it doesn't truly become a validated issue until we hear it directly from the patients themselves."

Through the Summer Founders program and the broader Horn Entrepreneurship ecosystem, the team has gained access to mentorship and industry connections that have helped refine their business model. As they move through the 11-week program, their focus remains on narrowing their target demographic and refining their prototyping process.

"First and foremost, I want to help people; I want to make their lives easier, I want to reduce patient burdens," Tran said. "I really hope to hone in on that by understanding the customer—who am I trying to help, how can I help them, and what's a gap that I can fill in their lives?"

A Shared Lesson

Across the Summer Founders cohort, a unified philosophy has emerged: the biggest barrier to success is the hesitation to begin. While their ventures vary, these founders share a conviction that college is the optimal environment to embrace the uncertainty of entrepreneurship.

For Mackenzie Frank of Safe Sip, the university is a vital safety net for professional risk-taking. "I would rather fail now while I’m surrounded by mentors and resources than wait until my own salary is on the line," Frank explains. "Get comfortable with failing, screwing up, and being wrong. It's critical to learn how to take good risks."

Sophia Small of Healing Ivy emphasizes that the pressure to have a perfect plan often keeps students on the sidelines. She encourages others to embrace the learning process, noting that the skills gained from hands-on work are irreplaceable. "It's okay not to have all the answers," Small says. "Find mentors, tap into resources like Horn, and just start."

For Rachel Tran and Somin Park of Insuvo, persistence is the key to market readiness. They view early attempts not as failures, but as essential steps toward growth. "Your first startup might not be successful," Park notes, "but those experiences make you better and get you closer to the market."

Ultimately, the cohort’s message is simple: the value lies in the effort. As Tran concludes, "If you try, you’ve already done more than the person who didn’t. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take, so just take the shot."

ABOUT HORN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Horn Entrepreneurship serves as the creative engine for entrepreneurship education and advancement at the University of Delaware. Currently ranked among the best entrepreneurship programs in the U.S., Horn Entrepreneurship was built and is actively supported by successful entrepreneurs, empowering aspiring innovators as they pursue new ideas for a better world.