Tim Marsh, founder of Open Labs, embarked on a mission to address the challenges faced by children with environmental allergies. Inspired by his own struggle with hay fever, Marsh realized convenient and affordable allergy treatments were inaccessible to many patients. After a period of research, he discovered sublingual allergy immunotherapy — an alternative to allergy shots prevalent in Europe and Asia — was underutilized in the U.S. Marsh’s journey through the University of Pennsylvania and its Wharton School’s startup infrastructure, along with awards and grants, led him to launch Open Labs, which strives to make prescription allergy treatment more convenient and widespread across the country. With a digital care platform, Pittsburgh-based Open Labs aims to remove barriers and provide treatments to those in need by selling off-label versions of allergy drops direct to consumers.
My startup’s story starts in my childhood backyard here in Pittsburgh.
When I was a kid, I had terrible hay fever. I was actually sent home in fourth grade because my eyes were so red and itchy that I couldn’t read the math test in front of me. I eventually started allergy shots, which truly changed my quality of life, allowing me to go back to being a kid.
But to get to that point was really challenging and frankly inaccessible for most children. Every week, I would go to school with a doctor’s note to leave school early. Fortunately, my mom was able to pick me up for my weekly injection — the last allergy shot appointment of the day.
The motivation to explore this startup grew out of a conversation with my friend — that we now laugh about — where I was relentlessly complaining about getting my allergy shots at school. She said, “well, aren’t there other options?” I had naively never considered that possibility. So I dove into some medical research, and my personal anecdotes were quickly reinforced by some shocking statistics. I found that environmental allergies are among the leading chronic illnesses for young Americans, but almost all patients who actively seek care suffer untreated due to the inconvenience and cost of allergy shots.
Building on this research, I was fortunate to engage with the startup infrastructure at the University of Pennsylvania and its Wharton School, where I learned more about both the entrepreneurship and health care ecosystems through insightful coursework, won awards from a few competitions and was accepted into the NSF’s I-Corps program and was awarded a small National Science Foundation grant. After graduation, I turned down a job offer to instead launch Open Labs, and I have been building to get this into the hands of patients and eventually make convenient, prescription allergy treatment the standard of care across the country.
At the core of our innovation is an important medical modernization known as sublingual allergy immunotherapy, also known as allergy drops. It makes use of the same medicine as allergy shots but is instead taken as a few drops under the tongue daily.
These drops are not new. They’ve been in practice for decades and are the standard of care in Europe and much of Asia and were published as a safe and effective alternative to allergy shots by the World Health Organization in 1999, but are still only in limited use in the U.S.
Open Labs uses its digital care platform to remove barriers to care and expand access to what, in my experience, is a life-changing treatment. I ultimately started Open Labs because no child should have to be sent home from a math test because they have working parents who don’t have time for weekly doctor’s appointments. Other stresses in life should not inhibit top-quality medical care, and with Open Labs we have an opportunity to change this dynamic by leveraging modern resources to unlock new potential. This industry has set itself up to be disrupted, and I happen to be the patient who got frustrated enough to do just that.
ABOUT TIM MARSH AND OPEN LABS:
Title: Founder, Open Labs
Age: 23
Year company established: 2021
Employees: One
