On 9 April, the final stage of the 7th contest of innovative student projects “Pharmacy of the Future 2022” was held at the Department of Management and Economics of Pharmacy of the Faculty of Pharmacy at VSU. The participants presented seven projects that focused on the improvement of pharmaceutical and also educational activities. For example, the project of secondary vocational education students included developing games that could be used to test students’ knowledge in the classroom.
Elena Chupandina, First Vice-Rector and Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs of VSU, Head of the Department of Management and Economics of Pharmacy, greeted the contest participants and introduced the members of the jury of the contest to the audience. The jury was composed of both university lecturers and representatives of pharmaceutical business. It was chaired by Maksim Gladkikh, Deputy Head of the Department of Science, Innovation, and Information Policy at VSU and Associate Professor at the Department of Economics and Organisations Management. It also included Maria Kurolap, Associate Professor at the Department of Management and Economics of Pharmacy; and the executives of pharmacy chains April, Zdorovy Gorod, and Pharmaimpex. The jury evaluated the projects according to such criteria as relevance, novelty, practical importance, project elaboration, quality of presentation, and ability to answer questions.
First place was taken by the mobile application project “Healthy family – healthy baby” by Daria Shapovalova, a 4th year student. Second place went to 4th year students Anastasia Yarichina, Ekaterina Gaiterova, and Marina Mishina for the project “Eco-box for pharmacy”. Third place was taken by 3rd and 4th year students Anastasia Skibina, Madina Abdukhalilova, Olga Sviridova, and Anastasia Yarichina for the “Myrecipe” pharmaceutical clothing shop project. In the last mentioned project, the students designed sketches of uniforms for pharmaceutical workers of different pharmacy chains in Voronezh, taking into account their brand colours and the exterior and interior designs of the pharmacies.
All the projects were developed as part of the Project Management and Team Building discipline under the guidance of Maksim Gladkikh, who teaches the discipline. Students from the Faculty of Economics of VSU were involved in the projects to calculate the payback period. At the end of the competition, the participants noted that they indeed succeeded in creating a team, allocating tasks within the projects, and managed to develop and present good projects as a result of fruitful team work. Representatives of the pharmaceutical business were interested in the projects, awarded the participants with prizes, and invited them to undertake an internship with further employment.
