On Free Thinkers Day, we celebrate those who have gone against the norm and questioned the status quo to achieve something great. In the world of pharmacy, Stu Amos, president and CEO of Flavorx, Fillmaster Systems and FillPure, is one such pioneer.
Amos’s long and varied career has been anything but boring, ranging from achievements in nuclear medicine and mechanical engineering. He was even deeply involved in helping develop a radiation detector that was sent into space to analyze the plume of Halley’s Comet.
After retirement, Amos realized that he wasn’t quite ready to slow down just yet.
“I was born hungry, and that hunger is only satisfied by creating solutions to problems, challenges, and opportunities,” said Amos. After meeting several business owners in Baltimore, a small San Diego-based pharmaceutical water dispensing company called Fillmaster Systems presented enough opportunity for Amos to rejoin the business world.
“[Fillmaster Systems] ended up intriguing me and allowed my entrepreneurial side to flourish,” said Amos.
After purchasing Fillmaster Systems, Amos found himself in the right place at the right time. He stumbled across a small medicine-flavoring company called FLAVORx at a Las Vegas tradeshow. FLAVORx’s representative told Amos about the flavors they developed for pharmacies to add to children’s medicine to make them taste good. But the company had ran into one major barrier – time constraints behind-the-counter.
“I quickly realized that Fillmaster technology was the solution to FLAVORx’s time needs,” Amos said. Combining these two companies into one, Amos saw an opportunity worth taking, and a problem worth solving.
In the last decade, FLAVORx and Fillmaster have grown together in leaps and bounds. After a few generations of Fillmaster machines, Amos and his team developed the Fillmaster Auto which merges the capabilities of water-dispensing and flavoring, into one. The result is reconstitution and flavoring of liquid medications for kids in a matter of seconds.
With the help of Fillmaster technology, Amos and his team has helped take medicine-flavoring from virtually unheard of to a commonplace pharmacy practice used in thousands of chain and independent pharmacies around the country.
"One of the most surprising facets of our business was realizing that we are not a flavoring company, we give children a feeling of control over the taste of their medicine, so we are a choice company not a flavoring company," said Amos.
“It is enormously gratifying to be in a business where in addition to the normal commercial benefits, you know you are making a difference in people’s health, people’s lives, and people’s challenges,” Amos added.
In this lies what it means to be a free thinker- the desire to change the way things have been in order to improve life for those who come after you.
Learn more about FLAVORx or Fillmaster Systems by getting in touch with us.