Community Highlights: Meet Marcin Michalak of Dojo Health

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marcin Michalak.

Hi Marcin, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born in Gdansk, Poland. As a teenager, I started working as a lifeguard. Quickly I realized that there is a shortage of well-trained lifeguards.

I decided to become became scuba diving, motorboat, and lifeguard instructor to be able to recruit, train and hire great workers fulfilling the needs of our local community (lifeguards). My passion for healthcare/lifesaving-related activities only strengthens my dreams of creating and designing hardware solutions in the future.

This led me to apply and get accepted into Biomedical Engineering studies on the specialization of Informatics in Medicine where I could use both directions (engineering and medical lectures) of courses to discover my “dream future job”.

While graduating from the university, I found a part-time job as a Network and Systems Administrator at a municipal company called “Water and Sewage Infrastructure in Gdansk” that enabled me to turn my theoretical knowledge about systems, computers, and hardware designs into practical use and understanding. I wasn’t the perfect match for biomedical engineering, but it was a very well-funded company whose budgets allowed me very quickly to work on the newest technology in the IT market, as well as participate in multiple certified courses from the top companies in the IT/Hardware scope.

At the end of my graduation, I knew I had to fulfill my dreams and founded my first startup, Dr. Poket related to my interests and passion, which is the combination of computer science and medicine. The very impulse to begin was our experience – a friend of ours was taking a lot of prescribed drugs and it was hard for him to keep track of all precautions that come with them. We have decided to help people like him using technology.

In the beginning, we created three applications that help verify whether the medicine you are taking can be combined with alcohol, whether it can be taken by pregnant women and if it affects psychomotor skills.

Then, our project grew to a whole system – dr Poket. It is a comprehensive solution designed to assist people struggling with taking prescribed drugs. Our platform was created to simplify communication between doctor and patient, with the simultaneous ability to supervise patients’ treatment. Furthermore, it is a place with well-organized data about contraindications and side effects of taking specific medications. Patients in a simple way, can get information about how a particular medication affects on breastfeeding, pregnancy, or driving skills. It also allows checking if the patient can drink alcohol during treatment. On the other hand, the platform automatically checks drug interactions in case of multiple medications or a patient wants to add new meds (e.g., headache pills) to the current treatment schedule.

Users were supported by an electronic meds assistant – PillBox. Here my passion for hardware started.

While being in the United States, during multiple acceleration programs in Silicon Valley, I established many business relationships with future partners and investors and I have gained knowledge about United States’ healthcare market. Here in the US, we came up with an idea for our new devices – HealthPoints. It’s a next-generation dispensary device that dispenses medication, vitamins, and supplements without packaging in medicine cups for immediate use. This includes vital information surrounding the possibility of hazardous interaction between different products.

Today I am developing Healthpoints with my dr Poket team and creating new products as well:
– Dojo Health – Personal fitness assistant that measures your workout efficiency based on the changes of body fat levels in the user’s body. DojoHealth is also a whole range of sensors that will take your training to a new level using movement detectors, analysis of blood flow, muscles’ proper work and growth
– Sentinel Impact Tracker – I managed to create a final electronic product that improves the safety of Californian roads,
– Sensio Air – I joined the Sensio Air startup to help them achieve the best possible solution for airborne pathogen identification system available and affordable for everyone
– Tresor Track – coin-size GPS, LTE and Bluetooth trackers to monitor the position of luxurious goods, and pet safety trackers.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Running a startup is often not a bed of roses and involves various adventures – some positive, some quite the opposite, but all of them allow you to learn a lesson from them. Let me tell about one of them: As a young startup, we were initially thrilled with the success of our first product in Poland and securing our first investment from a local investor. Buoyed by this early success, we successfully obtained funds from the National Center for Research and Development to expand to the United States. However, our focus on product development blinded us to the fact that our initial investor was beginning to undermine our progress, even going so far as to demand that he be installed as CEO of the company. Despite this setback, we persevered through long and difficult legal battles, ultimately blocking his attempts to take over the company and regaining control of our shares. Today, we are proud to be a successful business operating in both Poland and the USA.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Dojo Health?
Dojo Health is the fastest and most accurate way to know true caloric burn and body fat in your body. We use a near-infrared device that users put on its bicep that provides gold-standard accuracy to measure true caloric burn and body comp (including total body fat level) with results available in a mobile app in under 5 seconds.

What is unusual about Dojo Health is that the device that fits in the palm of your hand will allow you to analyze body composition comparable to DEXA scan technology. Thanks to this, such a test will be available to everyone – and completely safe. The X-ray, room-wide DEXA machine costs around $40,000, while Dojo Health is expected to cost $250 and emits completely safe infrared radiation. the obtained results, depending on your fitness goal, will allow us to select training via our platform and mobile application, the effectiveness of which you will be able to monitor in our ecosystem.

We see Dojo Health as a comprehensive product – full training support in the place where it is most needed. Although we start with the creation of a body fat measuring device that allows you to control its content in the body on an ongoing basis – this is only a small part of our philosophy. Dojo Health is also a whole range of sensors that will take your training to an unprecedented level using the latest technologies. Our solution helps you perform your exercises accurately, checking whether you are using the best potential of your training to get the best results. Thanks to the placement of sensors in comfortable sportswear, you can monitor the accuracy of the kinetics of your exercises and observe the work and growth of your muscles on an ongoing basis.

We support people who train on their own, personal trainers as well as professionals who train professional sports teams, allowing them to implement their training cycles as effectively as possible.

Dojo Health offers a range of benefits to different types of customers. For individual clients, including gym users and athletes of all levels, Dojo Health provides accurate and quick measurements of caloric burn and body composition, helping them track their progress and adjust their workouts to reach their fitness goals more effectively. The platform also offers personalized training plans based on the user’s goals and body composition data, helping them achieve optimal results.

For professional sports coaches and personal trainers, Dojo Health provides a comprehensive solution for measuring body fat, as well as the accuracy of exercise movements using the latest sensor technologies. This enables coaches and trainers to monitor the progress of their clients more effectively and to create personalized training programs for them. By using Dojo Health, they can help their clients achieve better results, improve their performance and minimize the risk of injury.

Dojo Health’s technology provides also a powerful tool for physiotherapists to improve patient outcomes and ensure that their patients are on track to make a full recovery.

For example, a physiotherapist working with a patient recovering from knee surgery could use Dojo Health’s sensors to monitor the patient’s knee movement during exercise and track their range of motion over time. This information can be used to adjust the patient’s exercise regimen and ensure that they are progressing toward their rehabilitation goals.

Furthermore, Dojo Health’s sensors can be used to ensure that patients are performing exercises correctly, which can be crucial for avoiding further injury or complications. By providing real-time feedback on movement and form, Dojo Health can help physiotherapists ensure that their patients are performing exercises safely and effectively.

For caregivers and doctors, Dojo Health provides a wealth of information on the correct body posture and the results of the use of kinetic devices. This data can be analyzed by orthopedists, pediatricians, geriatricians, and sports medicine doctors to gain valuable insights into their patients’ health and performance.

Finally, for sports teams, Dojo Health establishes direct cooperation and offers an ongoing analysis of body composition and performance during training. This enables sports teams to better prepare for their next seasons, track the progress of their athletes, and improve their overall performance. Dojo Health’s comprehensive solution can help sports teams achieve their goals and stay ahead of the competition.

What are your plans for the future?
At Dojo Health, we are committed to delivering the best possible product to our customers, and we know that this requires a highly skilled and dedicated team. In the next three years, we plan to hire around 150 employees, both in hardware and software development, as well as in customer support and sales. This will allow us to scale our operations and bring our innovative technology to more people around the world. By investing in our team, we are investing in the future of Dojo Health, and we are confident that this will lead to continued success and growth for our company.

Contact Info:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcin-michalak/