Business Meets Medicine

Alumnus Chris Tice combines medical ingenuity with business savvy as a successful Wyoming entrepreneur.

Armed with his bachelor’s degree in finance (’83) and an MBA (’84) from the University of Wyoming, Chris Tice  of Jackson Hole started his career in commercial banking. His wife, Carmel, is also a UW graduate and a pharmacist at St. John’s Medical Center. In 1991, they, along with business partner Dave Pestotnik, started their first business—a home infusion company. Tice subsequently created and sold three more regional home infusion companies to larger national companies, making him a successful serial entrepreneur. 

“As a result of being in the home infusion pharmacy business, we came up with the idea for a medical device,” he says. Thus launched PharmaC, where Tice serves as CEO. The company’s On-Site IV is a user-friendly, needleless, closed-system device for intravenous drug preparation and administration that can be used in multiple care settings. The company currently has three patents for the device, and it won the bronze prize in the drug-delivery and combination products category at the 20th annual Medical Design Excellence Awards competition in 2018.

The company obtained FDA clearance for the device in December 2016 and is exploring manufacturing, distribution and pilot options for the device.

Tice says his education at UW prepared him for success. “During my MBA program, we were able to do an internship and work on a summer project,” he says. “It brought together both the academic and the real-world experiences. It was a great opportunity to meld the two and see what factors go into making a successful business.”

The alumni connections have also been beneficial. Riley Allison, a 2011 UW graduate in marketing, works as an event specialist for UBM and noticed that a Wyoming company had enrolled in the 2018 Medical Design and Manufacturing conference. He reached out to Tice and encouraged him to enter the medical design competition. They then met at the New York awards ceremony. “Had it not been for Riley, we would not have completed the application and would have missed out on garnering this outstanding award,” Tice says.

The Tices give back to UW in multiple ways, including scholarships in business and pharmacy. Tice also serves on the School of Pharmacy’s board, College of Business Advisory Board and Bioscience Innovation Hub board. Dean Kem Krueger says Tice was instrumental in getting the hub started, including helping Krueger make connections with other successful scientists and health care experts. 

“We are hoping to help students and faculty who have ideas to be able to go through the process and provide support—whether that be laboratory support or legal support or the sharing of ideas in the field so they can bring their ideas to commercialization,” Tice says. (Read more about the hub.)

Tice believes Wyoming has fewer barriers for businesses than many other states. “Wyoming is great for promoting entrepreneurship. There are a lot of opportunities. A lot of people in the state have a great work ethic,” he says. “The positive aspects of being an entrepreneur are that you are your own boss, and there’s a direct correlation between effort and reward.”