Health IT, Startups

Entrepreneur develops food allergy app that’s a streamlined action plan for parents, caregivers

As the father of a son with a nut allergy, David Edwards is familiar with […]

As the father of a son with a nut allergy, David Edwards is familiar with the anxiety and need for preparedness that comes with the territory. It inspired him to launch a business around a mobile health app he helped develop called Rescufy, through University of Pennsylvania’s AppItUP competition.

It’s basically a checklist that streamlines the action plan for responding to severe allergic reactions from food allergies, particularly for parents and caregivers like a babysitter or schoolteachers and administrators. It helps users key in emergency contacts who are alerted to the user’s location when there’s an episode. It also makes it easier to obtain the user’s medical information if they go into anaphylactic shock. Edwards’ wife Rachel, who works as a nurse at Penn Medicine, offered some insight into the app’s design.

Rescufy bested several other medical apps in UPstart’s mobile app competition, AppItUP and secured $15,000 in seed funding in a recent presentation at the Quorum in the University City Science Center. The five or six teams that were selected to advance last fall had help from developers to produce an app. Earlier this month, each pitched their apps to investors.

Although Rescufy is by no means the only app developer in this space, a cursory search of Google Play’s app store had about 15-20. Edwards said he sees the potential for developing companion apps with pharmaceutical and biotech companies developing allergy treatments.

Rescufy is currently looking for people to beta test the app.

Rescufy’s launch comes as states pass legislation mandating the stockpiling of epinephrine injector pens or EpiPens by schools to make it easier to help students suspected of suffering from strong allergic reactions if the school nurse isn’t available. In November, Barack Obama signed a bill that gives states incentives to stockpile epinephrine at schools to avoid needless deaths from anaphylactic shock. According to the Wall Street Journal article, only four states require schools to stockpile epinephrine as of November last year: Nebraska, Virginia, Maryland and Nevada,

Earlier this year, New Jersey’s Assembly passed legislation that would require this of public and private schools. Previously, only students who were prescribed treatment could obtain access to these injections. The proposal, currently under review by a state Senate committee, also calls for training for other staff at the school to administer these injections in case the nurse isn’t available.

Shares0
Shares0