A young Dayton tech company is finalizing the development of a comprehensive alcohol and substance abuse disorders solution that accelerates how consumers find immediate treatment options.
The solution helps treatment centers eliminate numerous steps in their process to know when beds are available and to accept patients faster. Located in the former epicenter of the American opioid epidemic, Recovery Amped (RA) is using proprietary technology to benefit those fighting addictions, as well as family and friends of those battling addiction.
Joe Thomas, CEO, Recovery Amped
“So many people with addictions are looking for help, but then get overwhelmed because they don’t know where to start,” RA Co-founder and Executive Vice President Phillip Wenger said. “When someone is ready for help, it’s important they find it quickly because they could overdose at any point. Recovery Amped streamlines the whole process of getting into treatment.”
A mobile application and website, RA offers a variety of recovery services to benefit a wide spectrum of users, including people searching for treatment, those on the road to recovery, and friends and family.
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), over 70,000 people died from opioid overdose in 2017 with the highest death rates centered in the city of Dayton. With government funding and Medicaid expansion over the last two years, opioid overdose rates have dropped sharply, and Dayton has been emerging as a model city for recovery. RA is creating a practical, one-stop solution to help continue the wave of recovery in Dayton and around the nation.
“RA’s pinnacle features are the treatment finder and quick intake options,” Co-founder and CEO Joseph Thomas said. “These allow users to locate treatment centers that accept their specific insurance plan and have open beds. They can then easily apply for admission into those facilities.”
RA also houses several features for relapse prevention, including a recovery meeting finder, sobriety calendar, blog and panic button that immediately sends alerts to designated friends or family members. App users will also be able to set up “trigger spots,” places that may trigger them emotionally or physically and tempt them to relapse. Using geolocation technology, RA sends notifications to a user’s phone if he or she is approaching one of their programmed trigger spots.
According to Wenger, the app will be free to download, and all applicable features will also be housed on its website.
“For our users, it’s about access,” Wenger said. “The more opportunity that someone has to access to our technology, the better off they are going to be.”
Both Thomas and Wenger have vested interests in the mission of Recovery Amped. In 2011, Thomas found himself addicted to heroin after an escalated dependency on prescription pain pills. Homeless and jobless, Thomas began a journey to sobriety that blossomed into a calling to help others do the same. Since becoming sober, Thomas has helped thousands of people find treatment. He founded the “Kick It Tour,” an interactive music tour building hope, awareness and solutions for addiction. Wenger joined Thomas in his efforts with Kick It Tour after losing a best friend to opioid overdose, and together they built the idea for RA’s proprietary app technology.
Thomas, Wenger and the 10-member RA team have enlisted the business expertise of Dayton’s The Entrepreneurs Center (TEC) and its Entrepreneurial Services Provider (ESP) program to support them through the early stages of development. As part of ESP’s Healthcare/MedTech portfolio, RA receives financial, marketing and business consulting from industry professionals.
“The ESP staff has held our hand through the process of preparing to seek venture capital and brought us to the finish line,” Thomas said.
TEC acts as an accelerator and a business incubator for Miami Valley startups and early-stage technology companies. Currently, the ESP has 70 clients, including 22 healthcare and medical technology companies. In 2020, TEC will move into their future home in the Arcade with The University of Dayton.
“Great things are happening in Dayton,” said Karen Posey, one of the Executives in Residence for the Healthcare/MedTech portfolio at TEC. “We love helping our city grow as we open up doors for these small businesses.”
According to Posey, business professionals can be involved in a variety of ways, whether it’s opening the door for an ESP member company, being on an advisory board, doing individual investing or joining the Dayton Vision Tech Angels group.
RA is seeking donations and investments to fund the development of its app. Those interested in learning more about supporting RA’s mission can contact Wenger at [email protected] or Thomas at [email protected].
The RA team is headed by Wenger, co-founder with a decade of expertise in sales and customer service; Chief Executive Officer Joseph Thomas, co-founder and recovery advocate, who’s responsible for driving marketing and development efforts; and President Lyle Fried, a certified addictions professional, internationally-certified alcohol and drug counselor and certified health coach.
Namita Patel dreams of walking down the street in Dayton and seeing someone wearing clothing that was grown, dyed and produced locally.
On Saturday, Oct. 5, she’s hosting Dayton Fibershed Day, a day-long conference about the region’s opportunities for local growing, weaving, dying and clothing production. Namita pitched the idea two weeks ago at UpDayton Annual Summit. Dayton Fibershed Day is co-hosted by Rust Belt Fibersheld, a Cleveland-area fibershed with a 250-mile radius.
Common fabrics we wear today actually contain plastic fibers — they are fossil fuels-based, & they wash into waterways and wind up in our food. “We are literally eating our clothes,” Namita told the UpDayton Summit attendees.
There is a better way to dress, she said.
“Fibersheds present an alternative to these models — they regenerate ecosystems, create community and grow local economies,” she explains in the event description. “We can translate the gains we have made in regenerative agriculture and the local food movement to textiles by re-localizing our clothing.”
Her vision is a cooperative in Dayton — a network for farmers, dyers and artisans, growing the plants to be spun into the fibers & fabrics, growing the plants to be used for natural dyes, designing clothing from the local textiles.
“I want to walk down the street and see stuff grown here, made here — soil to sweater,” she said.
Namita first became interested in the fibershed concept while working at BE FREE Dayton, a nonprofit tackling human trafficking — while sex trafficking grabs more headlines, labor trafficking and labor conditions are also major issues in the supply chains of the products we use, she shared.
” A lot of the clothing we wear is made overseas, often in sweatshops,” Namita said. “Re-localizing our clothing allows greater transparency into the supply chain & a reconnection to the people, plants and animals that clothe us.”
There is already a strong local food movement here, so local fiber is a natural next step, she said. The Dayton region already has shepherds producing wools and farmers growing flax that can be used to make linen.
Dayton Fibershed Day will kick off at 10a at Agraria, located at 131 East Dayton-Yellow Springs Road in Yellow Springs. The full ticket costs $50, or subsidized $15 tickets are available. Register here.
Gary Chavez is a Wright Patterson Air Force Base aerospace engineer by day, indie game developer by night — and his latest creation, the pulp-era bluffing detective card game “Saints & Scoundrels,” is featured on Kickstarter right now.
The card game is for 2-6 players and games run 20-30 minutes. Everyone is a private detective searching for a serial killer. Brilliant criminal psychologist — but also imprisoned serial killer — Dr. Xyko is willing to help the detectives find their killer, but he also wants to drive them insane in this battle of wits & time.
The game was inspired by the movie “Silence of the Lambs,” Gary shared. The movie is one of his favorites — it was during a 2am viewing that he was struck by the FBI director’s directive to Jodie Foster’s character that she not allow Hannibal Lecter to drive her insane.
“I thought, this a push-your-luck scenario,” Gary said. “You just never know where inspiration will hit you for a game.”
Gary is a 20-year Air Force veteran. He and his wife have two children, and he began designing games because he was looking for a hobby that wouldn’t take up much space. He found a vibrant community of game designers across Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus & Indianapolis, he said.
‘There were a lot of creative people, a lot of supportive people — I wanted to be part of it,” he said.
He’s always had a creative outlet. Game development is very similar to systems engineering, a process of connecting many components to work in tandem, and so connects both his worlds, he said.
Saints & Scoundrels is his second game, but the first he has taken to Kickstarter. He’s looking to raise $2,750 to get it manufactured by Game Crafter. He’s currently about 60% funded with three+ weeks to go. Levels run from $25 for a basic edition of the game to $150 to get your image included in the game as one of the detective or serial killer characters. Back Gary’s Kickstarter here.
Erica Lugo, founder of EricaFitLove, is the newest trainer on USA’s reboot of the Biggest Loser television show, which will air in 2020.
Erica lost 160 pounds herself before opening her fitness studio in Centerville. She shared her journey on Instagram, building her brand to her current 526K followers.
We were thrilled to have Erica speak at Dayton Startup Week 2019 on building influence for your brand.
Check out the full PEOPLE story about her new gig on the Biggest Loser here.
In this new monthly feature, we’re celebrating milestones big and small with our entrepreneurs and founders! See what our awesome startups have been up to this month, in no particular order:
Tr3Designs launched Hidden Gems, a new app designed for Dayton’s artist-entrepreneur community. Congrats, Trey!
Third Perk Coffeehouse & Wine Bar opened its second location in Dayton Mall. Congrats, Juanita!
Dayton Fit Lab opened in its new Kettering location. Congrats, LaSue!
Magical Mud Ceramics‘ piggy banks made it to Broadway — 100+ banks are going to be used in the show “The Rose Tattoo” staring Marisa Tomei. Congrats, Jennie!
The founders of D20: A Bar with Characters opened a new game shop, Drunken Dragon, next door. Congrats, Andrew & Chrissy!
Emerald Sparks released her new “I Charge What I Want” book. Congrats, Emerald!
Smales Pretzel Bakery has expanded hard pretzel production & added local retailers. Congrats, Emma!
Tracy & Jeffrey McElfresh debuted Juicy Melt Supreme Hot Sauce at Oakwood Farmers Market. Congrats, Tracy & Jeff!
Handy Hats donated $3,750 to The Dayton Foundation from the sale of its “Dayton Strong” Handy Hats. Congrats, Dani!
Dolphin Hat Games landed a distribution partner that will put Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza in Barnes & Nobles stores nationwide. Congrats, Dave!
The Gem City Market broke ground — congrats, founders!
Erica Lugo, founder of EricaFitLove, announced that she is a trainer on the new reboot of hit TV show “The Biggest Loser”. Congrats, Erica!
Glo Juice Bar + Cafe, a cold-pressed juice & smoothie shop, opened on Brown Street. Congrats, Amy!
Belle of Dayton Distillery’s Van Buren Room received city approval to construct an outdoor patio. Congrats, founders!
Something or someone we missed? Tell us! We need your help rounding up this good news so we can celebrate our entrepreneurs together. Thank you in advance!
Dayton-based startup has developed a series of dual syringe technologies designed to not only save lives, but also save the U.S. healthcare system billions of dollars in wasted expenses.
DIVERSYN is a dual-syringe medical device invented by True Concepts Medical Technologies (TCMT) to maximize the timely diagnosis of sepsis, while also preventing false-positive blood cultures.
Defined as the body’s extreme response to an infection, sepsis is the leading cause of death in U.S. hospitals and claims the lives of eight million people around the globe each year.
“Misdiagnosis of sepsis is a huge problem in our healthcare system,” TCMT Founder and CEO Michael Hopkins said. “Millions of septic patients have a delay in diagnosis each year due to an improper collection of blood cultures. Additionally, 1.5 million patients receive unnecessary treatment for false-positive blood cultures, meaning they are diagnosed with sepsis when they don’t truly have it.”
According to Hopkins, human error is prevalent in sepsis diagnosis because the current blood culture collection techniques are highly flawed, leading to sepsis misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis.
“The U.S. healthcare system spends $7.5 billion treating 1.5 million patients afflicted by false-positive blood cultures as a result of contamination that occurs during the collection and processing of these cultures. On the other hand, actual septic patients often receive a delayed or false-negative blood culture due to underfilled blood culture bottles. DIVERSYN is designed to mitigate both of these issues.”
A dual-syringe system, DIVERSYN will dramatically decrease false-positive blood cultures by isolating the initial 3 mL of blood, which are often contaminated, from the rest of the sample within one syringe. The outer syringe collects 20 ml of contaminate-free blood, decreasing the likelihood of both false-positive and false-negative blood cultures and allowing clinicians to accurately determine the correct amount of blood transferred to each blood culture for proper diagnosis. According to Hopkins, current research has shown that 50-70 percent of adult bottles and 90 percent of pediatric bottles are underfilled, meaning many septic patients may be falsely considered healthy.
“Sepsis kills more Americans than breast cancer, lung cancer and stroke combined. Yet 80 percent of sepsis deaths may be prevented with rapid diagnosis and treatment,” said Hopkins. “I thought of the idea after witnessing years of waste in healthcare. I stopped asking ‘why do we continue to do things the way we do?’ and decided to be someone that fixes those issues by getting to the root of the problem – a trait my mother taught me, who passed away from sepsis this past January.”
TCMT’s team is led by Hopkins, an R.N II with more than 20 years of critical care experience combined with a 25-year background in design; Chief Medical Officer Dr. Arash Babaoff, a pediatrician for 25 years; and Business Development Director Timothy J. Hopkins, who has an MBA and is a registered pharmacist (RPh) with 25 years of pharmacy industry experience in key roles at Omnicare Inc., WellPoint Inc. and PillPack.
DIVERSYN is patented on all 20 claims and is one of three True Concepts Next Gen dual syringe technologies the company is preparing to bring to market. Both DIVERSYN and S.A.F.E. (a syringe technology which improves the delivery of epinephrine and/or adenosine to the central compartment) are projected to be submitted to the FDA in late 2020. TCMT currently holds four U.S. patents and has filed internationally in multiple countries.
“If DIVERSYN was implemented into care in the state of Ohio, it could result in healthcare savings of $40 million per year,” said Hopkins.
According to Hopkins, The Entrepreneurs Center (TEC) in Dayton and its Entrepreneurial Services Provider (ESP) program is an instrumental part of the True Concepts team.
“Becoming an ESP member has been vital to our growth. Not only has the program helped cover our intellectual property costs, but it has also opened doors that allowed us to make invaluable connections. In fact, our syringe technologies were named the 2019 most promising startup by the Quality & Safety Education for Nurses International Forum due to ESP’s nomination.”
TEC acts as an accelerator and a business incubator for Miami Valley startups and early-stage technology companies. Currently, the ESP has 70 clients, including 22 healthcare and medical technology companies. In 2020, TEC will move into their future home in the Arcade with The University of Dayton.
“Several of these companies can become the next CareSource in terms of impact and prominence,” said Karen Posey, one of the Executives in Residence for the Healthcare/MedTech portfolio at TEC. “We are building tremendous energy in the community around the Healthcare/MedTech segment. Now is the perfect time for additional people within the community to rally around startups like True Concepts and become a part of the momentum.”
According to Posey, business professionals can be involved in a variety of ways, whether it’s opening the door for an ESP member company, being on an advisory board, doing individual investing or joining the Dayton Vision Tech Angels group.
TCMT is actively pursuing partnerships with existing medical device companies to manufacture, sell and distribute their portfolio of dual-syringe technologies. Those interested in learning more about supporting TCMT’s mission can contact Hopkins at [email protected].
We’re excited at the lineup of entrepreneurs slated for this Friday’s Early Risers!
Please note the new time & location — pitches will start promptly at 8a in the BarryStaff Community Room, 230 Webster St, Dayton.
You’ll meet:
Joyce Barnes, creator of MADE, the Modern African Diaspora Experience, an online museum platform that seeks to connect the members of the diaspora via news & travel;
Bob Lair, creator of MuseumQuest, an app designed to help museums engage younger generations through features such as augmented reality;
& Kane Pickrel, cofounder of Mogul, an app that will utilize AI & machine learning to automate property management.
Our September edition of Early Risers is sponsored by Don from Smart Data, a Dayton-based software development company. He’ll bring the coffee and treats to kick off the 8a event.
Early Risers is a morning pitch series that connects entrepreneurs to the things they need most, like first customers, key employees, mentors, funding, and more. Each startup gets 10 minutes to pitch, then the audience gets 5 minutes for Q&A.
In the last two years, 90% of startups have gotten their ask granted through a connection made at Early Risers. So grab a cup of coffee & a donut and find a place you can plug into Dayton’s startup community!
After Early Risers, head over the the Kuhns Building, 15 W 4th St., for Fourth Friday — a whole day of free coworking with The Entrepreneurs Center & Nucleus. Learn about new programming in the works and the Arcade development at Launch & Learn at 12p. Happy hour kicks off at 3p and Arcade tours will start at 3:30p.
Let us know you’re coming! Register here.
Want to pitch? Click here: http://bit.ly/pitchEarlyRisers
Want to sponsor (and get two minutes in front of the audience)? Click here: http://bit.ly/sponsorEarlyRisers
Hope to see you at BarryStaff on Friday!
Dayton’s various entrepreneurial service providers (The Entrepreneurs Center, Dayton Tech Guide, Downtown Dayton Partnership, Nucleus, Miami Valley Small Business Development Center, Startup Grind, Better Business Bureau serving Dayton & the Miami Valley + others) have been working to be more collaborative in our efforts to connect, support & serve YOU — the region’s entrepreneur community.
To that end, we’re proud to introduce Launch Dayton.
You’ll start to see this logo and hashtag pop up more frequently across our entrepreneurial ecosystem — it is the rallying cry, shared identity, umbrella visual for our collective efforts to build this entrepreneur community.
The people building events for you and meeting with you won’t change — but we will streamline our processes to make our community easier to find and access for those entrepreneurially-minded folks in our region who we haven’t met yet.
At Launch Dayton, we believe everyone, regardless of their background, should have the opportunity to determine their own economic prosperity.
We’re building this community by designing an easily accessible environment, high-caliber programming, and a connected network of champions, mentors and resource providers, enabling all entrepreneurs to succeed in their entrepreneurial pursuits.
We will have succeeded when the Dayton region has a thriving and intentionally inclusive community that continuously celebrates, supports, and inspires all entrepreneurs, and when the demographic makeup of the startup community matches the makeup of our region.
Thank you to all of you who completed surveys over the last year & shared ideas and feedback on the words & images that inspire & represent you. Your active engagement made this launch possible.
• A new monthly event, Launch Pad — where the entrepreneurially-minded connect!
Mix & mingle with fellow movers, shakers, entrepreneurs, creatives, founders, freelancers, engineers, researchers. Build networks in & out of your industry. Learn what and connect with who you need to launch your: startup, business, product, idea, collaborative, nonprofit.
Join us each month in the Nucleus coworking space in the Kuhns Building, next door to The Arcade, the future home of Dayton’s innovation community. We’ll kick off the day with a lunchtime Launch + Learn (featuring a new product demo and a guest speaker), then wrap up the day with workshops & networking. Cowork for free anytime throughout the day.
This series in inspired by Venture Cafe in St. Louis. In the future, workshops and meetups will run in one-hour blocks from 4-8p. If you have a topic you want to hear about, or a meetup you’d like to host during the event, please reach out to us — we’d love to collaborate!
• The Dayton Tech Guide website & social media will roll over to Launch Dayton. We’ve always worked to connect, support & communicate across all of our region’s entrepreneurship sectors, and we will continue to do so as we manage Launch Dayton’s online presence.
• We’ll be rolling out a new platform called Union that will act as a sort of internal social media network for our entrepreneur community. Once you create an account, you’ll be able to access a full calendar of events, schedule meetings with resource providers and mentors, and communicate with industry- and program-specific cohorts, all in one spot.
• We’ll also be introducing a new email management system that will allow you to choose the specific topics that interest you from our weekly e-blasts. You’ll also be able to choose the time and frequency of delivery of your now-personalized newsletter.
So spread the news and join the Launch Dayton community to launch your business | startup | new product line | nonprofit | social enterprise | fill-in-your-blank!
Last month, Noah Bragg & Drew Bidlen live-streamed the development of a software product they launched within 24 hours.
SnoozeYouLose is a text-based application designed to help you with your morning routine — you set when you want to get up & you get a morning text accordingly. If you don’t respond and answer the math or trivia question within five minutes, an amount you specify at setup is donated to a charity.
Noah & Drew began at 6a on Saturday, Aug. 10 & launched the initial version 24 hours later on Product Hunt. Of the roughly 30 products that launched that day, SnoozeYouLose landed in 7th place with 86 up-votes, Noah said.
Over the 24-hour window, 550 people unique viewers popped onto Noah’s Twitch stream to watch, and 850 unique viewers popped onto Drew’s Twitch stream. That meant there were typically 15-30 people watching at a time — and when the developers got stuck, the viewers often jumped in to offer suggestions & solutions, Noah said.
“It was a lot of fun, thought we got really tired in the last 4 or 5 hours,” Noah said.
One challenge they stumbled into toward the end of the process was figuring our user’s timezones, he said. In a mobile app, you can pull that data from the mobile device, but in a text app, you have to have people report it, in order to send their wake-up text on time.
They also ran into an issue with the credit card integration — when Noah tested it, he was charged right away, which makes the app look like a scam, he said. They wanted to be able to charge individuals the following day after they signed up. In the end, they launched the first version without being able to take credit cards, so the first day was free. Initial user pledges ranged from $5 to $50 per day, but having to re-sign people up later significantly cut the number of individuals who actually followed through and provided payment info – a lesson learned, Noah said.
After launching on Product Hunt, a nonprofit founder reached out to Noah and Drew to talk about potentially collaborating, Noah said. The nonprofit’s website receives about 300K hits per month, and the founder was interested in the potential of SnoozeYouLose as fundraising platform.
If that opportunity doesn’t pan out, it’s unlikely the cofounders will put much more work into their experiment, Noah said.
“Building something in public can help you learn pretty quickly,” he said.
Having friends and strangers watch adds a layer of accountability and provides feedback and motivation, he said.
“Just get out there, build stuff, see what happens,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be perfect before you try it.”
Would you like to see Smales Pretzel Bakery‘s hard pretzels on a retail shelf near you?
The longtime family-owned Dayton pretzel company has recently doubled its production of hard pretzels, so they’re looking for a few more regional retailers interested in selling them, owner Emma Smales said.
Emma is the fifth generation to own Smales Pretzel Bakery. The company was started by her great great grandfather in 1906. She moved home to Dayton from California in July 2015 to take over the bakery from her father. She runs it with her husband, Joe — he oversees day-to-day operations, she handles the admin and marketing pieces, while also working full-time in the public health sector.
At Smales Pretzel Bakery, the hard and soft pretzels use the same ingredients, but different processes, Emma explained. Traditionally, her family would work to produce both hard and soft pretzels in the same eight-hour workday — but that’s hard to do while you’re stopping to talk to customers who are popping in & out to buy soft pretzels, she said.
Emma & Joe have shifted that workflow — now they make soft pretzels all morning, so they’re fresh for customers during open hours. Then they can spend uninterrupted afternoons focusing just on making hard pretzels, she said.
“We’re making thousands of these pretzels at a time, and it’s very labor-intensive,” she said. “We’ve basically been able to double our hard pretzel production because because we have more time to make them.”
Currently, the bakery’s hard pretzels can be found on the shelves of all three Dorothy Lane Markets, Kramers, and two Arrow Wine locations.
“They been great, and we love it, so we want to add one or two more retailers int he same vein,” Emma said. “We want local, smaller-ish shops. We trust them to always sell our product with integrity.”
Folks have also encouraged her to expand geographically, Emma said, so she’d love to find a shop in Xenia or Try.
Smales Pretzel Bakery produces about 13K hard pretzels per week. If you have an idea of a new retailer for them, reach out at [email protected] or call the bakery during business hours at (937) 253-7482.
31 S. Main St.
Dayton, OH 45402
[email protected]Get Directions
