Team Juniper, the brains behind an AI transcription platform that aims to simplify medical documentation and billing, won the first-place prize of $30,000 in the 2025 Mayo Business Plan Competition.
Team members Yasaman Galer ’25, Livia Minaides ’27, and Isha Patwardhan ’26 conceptualized their innovative app with the goal of streamlining healthcare administration for both patients and providers.
“We’ve seen our friends and family members go through healthcare struggles where they feel they’re not being heard by the doctor,” Patwardhan says. “It inspired us to come up with an idea for how we can make people’s lives easier.”
Galer, a biology major in the pre-med track, has shadowed doctors in private practice and in hospitals and noticed that documenting patient encounters was incredibly time-consuming. With a seed of an idea, she recruited fellow biology major Patwardhan and marketing major Minaides to problem-solve.
They came up with a plan for a web-based app that could record and quickly transcribe a consultation into useful visit summaries for both the physician and the patient. The app would use AI technology to go the additional step of recommending appropriate billing codes for insurance, based on the transcription. The app would integrate with existing hospital systems so healthcare professionals would reduce time spent on transcribing, coding, and billing visits and spend more time on patient care.
The team sought mentorship from industry professionals, alumni, and past competition finalists as they polished their pitch. “I truly learned the value of networking,” Minaides says.
For Galer, a finance minor who graduates in May, the competition supplied the hands-on experience that cemented her interest in the process of starting a business. “I’m hoping to get involved in startups or in tech in some way or capacity in the near future,” she says. “Finding the intersection of medicine, technology, and business is where I’d really like to focus my attention.”
This year, 16 teams competed in the challenge, spending much of the academic year on their projects. Three teams made it to the finals in the Mayo Concert Hall on March 26, where each had 30 minutes to make presentations and respond to questions from a five-person panel of alumni judges.
In all, $60,000 in prize money was awarded at the competition’s finale on March 26. An app to improve collaboration between schools, families, and healthcare providers to support student success was the runner-up, earning team NODE $20,000. The third-place team, Confi/o, won $10,000 for their plan to help startups and small businesses revolutionize smartphone app prototyping — no coding experience necessary.
The Mayo Business Plan Competition was established in 2011 through the generosity of finance professor emeritus Herbert B. “Buddy” Mayo. Through the TCNJ Foundation, Mayo established an endowment that supports the competition — one of the most robust in New Jersey.
Second place ($20,000): NODE by Akshita Anupam ’26, chemistry; Thvisha Masireddy ’26 early childhood education/iSTEM; Laasya Seelam ’26 biomedical engineering.
NODE is an innovative ed-tech platform dedicated to improving communication within the educational ecosystem. By providing a secure, user-friendly solution, NODE fosters collaboration between schools, families, and healthcare providers to support student success. With a focus on affordability, efficiency, and data security, NODE aims to bridge communication gaps and streamline information sharing in education.
Third place ($10,000): Confi/o by Rebecca Kimmick ’25 electrical engineering; Shawn Kushner ’25, computer engineering; Jasmine Ocasio ’25, computer engineering; and Chris Toala ’25, computer engineering.
Confi/o is an innovative technology company revolutionizing prototyping for startups and small businesses. By offering a modular Printed Circuit Board (PCB) integrated with an intuitive smartphone application, Confi/o eliminates the financial and technical barriers traditionally associated with hardware development. Focusing on affordability, sustainability, and ease of use, Confi/o enables businesses to rapidly prototype and iterate their ideas without requiring coding expertise. Utilizing Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cloud-based data storage, Confi/o delivers a seamless, energy-efficient solution tailored to the needs of modern tech developers.
— Emily W. Dodd ’03