Photo by Fly for Fun on Flickr. Some Rights Reserved
Wednesday, May 15th, 5:30 – 8pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)
RSVP at Facebook
For the May Geek Dinner, we may have the perfect Providence startup story!
When his 2-year-old son was diagnosed with diabetes, former jewelry industry executive Angelo Pitassi Jr. started learning about medical alert bracelets. He was unimpressed to say the least. In short order, Angelo partnered with technologist Christopher Melo, and HealthID was born.
Today the Jewelry District-based startup is poised at the intersection of the jewelry business and healthcare technology, and is accepting pre-orders for its first product — HealthID Profile (or “HIP”) Bands. HIP enables first responders to pull up critical, in-depth, current health information from NFC-based bands onto a web/mobile interface. The wearer can also manage all aspects of their personal health scenario while on the go.
On Wednesday, the Co-Founders CEO Angelo Pitassi Jr. and CTO Christopher Melo will tell the HealthID story, demonstrate their HIP product and give a sneak peek of where they’re headed next.
Please RSVP at Facebook – and while you’re there please like our Facebook page. And if you want to join our very-low-volume email announcement send an email to Jack Templin, jtemplin@gmail.com with your name and affiliation.
As always, for first-timers here are the details on the Geek Dinners:
- The event itself is FREE! Beverages and food are for sale at AS220’s excellent bar and restaurant.
- Doors open at 5:30pm. Socializing, eating and drinking up until the 30 min presentation/q&a around 6:30pm. Afterwards, back to socializing, eating, drinking…
- It’s totally casual. Wear whatever, bring whoever, arrive and take off whenever! And don’t worry about eating or not – come famished or full – eating is optional, and frankly, the least of the festivities (that’s not say the food isn’t good – it’s actually great)
- Topics of conversation will vary as they will at any gathering of geeks, but many of us will be talking about AJAX, mash-ups, start-ups, new devices, innovative business models, interaction design, social computing, digital art, web services, etc. etc. etc.
- There is Wi-Fi so bring your connected device of choice.
The evening will feature Providence-based startup 
Knowyo will help you to never forget a name again. Their web and mobile-based adaptive learning platform integrates with LinkedIn (and soon corporate social networks like Yammer) to enable you to quickly and enjoyably learn the names and faces of the people you need to know.
Over the past decade Alan has grown Providence-based ABCya.com into an award-winning educational juggernaut with over 175 online games and several best-selling mobile apps. He has bootstrapped ABCya.com to significant profitability with over 1 million app downloads to date and nearly 100 million visits totalling over 1 billion pageviews annually.
The February Geek Dinner will feature 
We hear near daily about the frustrations (nightmares?) patients face in navigating our convoluted healthcare system. What we don’t hear about are the challenges that healthcare providers – the doctors, nurses, and other clinicians – face in providing better patient care. The pain is especially acute around how providers communicate and collaborate with one another.
At next week’s January Geek Dinner, fresh off their announcement of Slater’s $250K investment into Care Thread, CEO & MD Scott Guelich and CTO (and healthcare IT industry veteran) Andrew Shearer (
