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What if the fix for a life-or-death problem was small enough to fit in the tiny pocket of your jeans?
Jessica Walsh has a severe allergy, the kind where the wrong exposure becomes an emergency. Prescribed a bulky EpiPen, she taped it to her arm just to go running. Rather than live with it, the founder and CEO of Rx Bandz built a better one.
She sits down with J. Michael Fischer Jr. to trace how one problem became MiniJect, an auto-injector half the size of a traditional one, then a platform the U.S. military is backing to deliver medications from pain relief to treatments that stop bleeding. She cut open her own EpiPen to see inside, built a team of specialists, and learned to stop talking and listen to patients.
If you have ever learned to live with a problem, don't miss this. Listen now.
Timestamped Highlights
[03:48] – The bee sting that started it all, and the line that turned a patient into a founder
[04:50] – Before any of this, she built wireless networks where there was nothing
[05:48] – The leap most people never make: leaving a funded job with an amazing budget
[07:23] – Why she works on this like her life depends on it, because it does
[08:02] – The calls from mothers, and the story that makes this bigger than one person
[09:15] – What happened when the military asked, what else can you deliver
[10:03] – MiniJect explained like you are the patient: cap off, press, done in under half a second
[11:18] – Why it did not stop at epinephrine, and the IV drug they moved to one injection
[13:12] – Drone warfare, no medic, and doing drug math under fire in night vision goggles
[14:30] – Built to survive Special Forces and a kid's backpack, military-grade protection for families
[16:40] – The DIY moment: putting her own auto-injector in a vise and cutting it open
[17:11] – From napkin sketch to a manufacturable device, and the New Jersey partners who made it real
[19:46] – The New Jersey funding program she could not believe was real
[23:23] – The million-dollar question: the pivot that only happened when she stopped talking and listened
Mentioned Resources
About the Guest
Jessica Walsh is the founder and CEO of Rx Bandz, a biotech developing the next generation of patient-centric auto-injectors to deliver a wide range of injectable medications. After a severe allergic reaction to a bee sting left her carrying a bulky EpiPen, she set out to build a better solution and created MiniJect, an ultra-compact auto-injector less than half the size of a traditional one. Before founding Rx Bandz, she built wireless telecommunications infrastructure with Bechtel, work that taught her to move into new territory and navigate the regulatory hurdles and milestones a hard build demands. Today her platform is designed to serve patients, EMS, and the U.S. military.
🔗 LinkedIn | Website
Important Links
Going Beyond the Deal is an original podcast brought to you by J. Michael Fischer Jr. Production and editing by Podcast Your Brand.
