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    healthy choice

    Brainy new Houston-based wellness app keeps you healthy while watching for future issues

    InnovationMap Staff
    Apr 17, 2023 | 9:45 am
    myAvos app woman with phone woman with iphone

    Get current health info and potential future issues with myAvos.

    Photo courtesy of myAvos

    Meet Laura. She’s not human, but she could be the key to your aging healthfully. She’s the digital wellness coach on myAvos, a groundbreaking app that launched this week from OptiChroniX.

    Now meet Le Dam, the woman behind the app. Dam is a medical doctor, as well as CEO and co-founder of OptiChroniX. While practicing medicine in her birthplace of Australia, Dam realized that her life of prescribing medications to patients who were already sick was not how she had envisioned helping people. She knew that prevention, using the five pillars of healthy aging — nutrition, activity, sleep, health, and stress — was the way to keep patients fit and happy into their golden years.

    She returned to California, where she lived after leaving Houston as a youth, to work at a startup with the goal of one day heading a company of her own. She met Swiss-based COO and co-founder, Rene Gilvert, on LinkedIn.

    “He was looking for a medical doctor to join his startup,” Dam recalls. “We were so well aligned that we decided to join forces.” Now, the team works remotely in locations ranging from Dam’s home in Houston to Portugal.

    When the pandemic happened, Dam took the opportunity to leave the Silicon Valley and work remotely from Houston, a return that she says was always her end goal.

    “I always knew that I wanted to build my business in Houston,” Dam says, mentioning the assets of the world’s largest medical center, a thriving startup community, and diverse population for whom she wants to build her technology.

    myAvos pairs with a user’s smart watch and harnesses their health information such as physical activity and hours slept. The user can also input additional information such as blood test results and meals eaten. The app analyzes the information provided and assesses the user’s risk for chronic illness later in life. From there, Laura coaches them on what changes they can make to live healthier lifestyles. The app even reminds users when to take their medications and shares information with designated caregivers.

    The app has been designed by behavioral health scientists to understand why you’re not exercising enough or eating right and can offer personalized motivations to get users off the couch.

    -----

    Continue reading this article by InnovationMap's Alice Levitt on our sister site, InnovationMap.

    news/innovation
    popular

    washed and folded

    Texas-based 'DoorDash for laundry' tumbles into Houston

    Jef Rouner
    May 1, 2025 | 4:00 pm
    NoScrubs founders
    Photo courtesy of NoScrubs
    undefined

    Laundry may seem like an endless task that piles up, but a new service offers a solution to overwhelmed Houston families.

    Enter NoScrubs, an Austin-based home laundry pickup service that has just expanded to Houston. Described by the company as "DoorDash — but for laundry," they wash customer's clothes at local laundromats and return them the same day folded and ready to be put away.

    The service took off like gangbusters in Austin, making an expansion to the state's largest city an obvious choice. It's not universal coverage just yet. For now, only the following zip codes have NoScrubs service available: 77002, 77004, 77005, 77006, 77007, 77008, 77009, 77010, 77018, 77019, 77024, 77025, 77027, 77046, 77056, 77057, 77081, 77098, 77401, 77030, 77003.

    A single pickup starts at $40 for 20 pounds of laundry, while the basic monthly subscription is $60 for two pickups. All services use hypoallergenic detergents.

    The average American family spends about 240 hours a year on laundry, making it a very time-consuming chore. For people with disabilities, difficult work schedules, and other circumstances, it can be a real help, says co-founder Matt O'Connor.

    "Some of our favorite customer stories simply revolve around saving people time when they have something challenging going on," he writes in an email. "For example, one customer reviewed NoScrubs saying 'So happy I could cry! (Partially because I'm pregnant and my emotions are heightened!)...1000% recommend if you have time restrictions or physical restrictions! ' So, whether it’s saving time, the affordability, or the pleasantly surprising turnaround time, NoScrubs has a variety of benefits for any customer."

    NoScrubs is also a new opportunity for Houston's gig workers. Because there are no passengers, it can be a safer alternative to driving ride share for women and other people apprehensive about having strangers in their cars. As NoScrubs partners with local laundromats, drivers are also going to centralized locations rather than all over the map, leading to less wear and tear on their cars. The laundromats benefit as well, since NoScrubs loads are ones that would otherwise be done at home.

    "Our model makes driving a tiny fraction of the time, so folks who don’t want to wear down their vehicles and spend a ton on gas love working at NoScrubs," added O'Connor.

    To celebrate the Houston launch, NoScrubs is offering 50 percent discount off the first two months for CultureMap readers with the code CULTUREHOUSTON at noscrubs.com.

    laundry pickup servicenoscrubsapps
    news/innovation
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