Neurovus | Recovery Intelligence for Firefighters and First Responders
Firefighter in turnout gear
Recovery intelligence for first responders

Stress builds like an injury.
See the drift while recovery still works.

First responders are tactical athletes. We track physical load and treat injuries early. The strain that builds call after call has never been tracked the same way. Neurovus reads it from the wearable you already wear, against your own baseline, and shows it to you before it becomes a crisis.

Not therapy. Not a hotline. Recovery intelligence.

A portfolio company of #7 VC Firm in the World
59%
of first responders report
burnout symptoms
NY State Survey, 2025, n=6,000+
2017
the year more firefighters
and police officers died by suicide
than in the line of duty
Ruderman Family Foundation, 2018

The Short Answer

What is Neurovus?

Neurovus is a recovery intelligence platform built for firefighters and first responders. It reads sleep, heart rate variability, and resting heart rate from the wearable a responder already wears, compares them to that person's own baseline, and reflects any drift back to them privately through NAVI, a conversational AI companion.

Departments see only anonymous, aggregate trends, never an individual. Neurovus is a general wellness platform. It does not diagnose, it does not notify anyone, and it is never used for fitness for duty, discipline, or assignment.


Why We Built It

Built by a firefighter.
For the people who run in.

Gary Roberts, Founder and CEO of Neurovus, in Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue uniform
Gary RobertsFounder & CEO
20 years, Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue

“I've spent twenty years on the job. I've watched good people carry things home that they never talked about, because nobody built anything that met them on their terms. NAVI is my attempt to fix that part.”

Most systems built for first responder wellness wait for the same moment: the one where someone finally says they're not okay. By then, the drift has often been building for weeks. The signs were there. The body was already showing it. Nobody was watching.

Neurovus is built for the time before that moment. Not to replace your peer team, your chaplain, or your EAP, but to get the right people to the table earlier, on the responder's own terms.

Mission

Close the lag. Before it costs a life.

Reduce the time between stress building up and a real human conversation, starting with the people who carry the heaviest load.

Vision

No first responder reaches crisis alone.

The pattern was seen. A person chose to reach out. The conversation happened earlier, because someone sat down at the right table at the right time.


Why Every Responder Needs This

The gap is not a resource problem.
It's a timing problem.

The help exists. Peer teams, EAPs, and clinicians are ready. What is missing is an early signal. Here is what the research says, with every finding labeled by strength, including what it has not shown yet.

  • 59%
    of first responders report burnout symptoms
    NY State Survey, 2025, n=6,000+
  • 37%
    of firefighters screened positive for a sleep problem. Over 80% of them never knew
    Barger et al., J Clin Sleep Med, n≈7,000
  • 45 of 83
    US firefighter deaths in 2025 were heart attacks
    NFPA
  • 2017
    more firefighters and police officers died by suicide than in the line of duty
    Ruderman Family Foundation, 2018
01 · Responders are tactical athletes
The National Strength and Conditioning Association counts firefighters, police, EMS, and military as tactical athletes.
Strong
02 · The load is as heavy as sport, or heavier
Near maximal cardiac strain, chronic sleep disruption, and repeated trauma exposure, with no off season.
Strong
03 · Stress and injury travel together
The IOC says mental health symptoms raise physical injury risk and slow recovery. In 2,339 firefighters, job stress and PTSD each tracked with a 34% higher probability of musculoskeletal symptoms.
Moderate, association not cause
04 · Recovery programs pay
A firefighter sleep health program cut disability days 46% in a randomized trial. The Army's embedded performance teams, which include mental readiness staff, return an estimated $8.15 per $1.
Moderate to strong
Read the Full Recovery Model → Over 50 sources, every claim labeled by strength.

What We Believe

We already know how to handle an injury.
We just never applied it here.

When someone gets hurt on the job, we find the cause, track the load, measure recovery, and nobody thinks twice about rehab. Strain on the nervous system builds the same way, from repeated calls, broken sleep, and years of load. It shows up in the body before it shows up in a conversation.

Step 01
Load

Physical and cognitive. Calls, shifts, broken sleep, the scenes you carry home, and decisions made in seconds. Every activation adds to it.

→
Step 02
Strain

Autonomic and recovery patterns drift from your own baseline. Your body registers it before you do.

→
Step 03
Recovery

Guided, tracked, and on your terms. Recovery trained with the same discipline as everything else on the job.

Nobody is ashamed of rehab after a knee injury. Recovery from strain should carry the same weight.


How It Works

Your body knows before you do.
Your data stays yours.

01

Connect your wearable

Sleep, heart rate variability, and resting heart rate from the wearable you already wear.

02

NAVI learns your baseline

Yours, not a population average. A 14 day trajectory shows where you have been heading, not just one bad night.

03

Drift comes to you first

When your recovery drifts, NAVI reflects it back to you. Not your chief. Not HR. You.

04

You decide what is next

Recovery guidance, a peer, a professional, or nothing at all. You choose who, and you start it.

Raw wearable readings stay inside Neurovus systems. They never reach the department, command, or our AI provider. The AI receives only a pattern summary with no name or identifier attached. The department sees anonymous aggregate trends, never an individual.


From the Field

Early, and moving.
Here is where we are.

  • Beta
    75+ first responders using Neurovus
  • Departments
    1 department on board, 5 more in conversation
  • Research
    Discussions with 5+ universities
  • Next cohort
    Launching Q1 2027, department spots limited

“It doesn't feel like an app. It feels like talking to a friend. It remembers what we talked about, asks how the shift is going, checks if it's a rough day. When things get heavy, it doesn't push. It just quietly points you toward a real person.”

Lt. Drew MastersFire Lieutenant, Paramedic, Instructor. Fort Lauderdale Fire Department

“Voluntary participation, non-diagnostic engagement, wearable-informed early awareness, and privacy protections that hold up to labor scrutiny.”

Chief HolteFire Chief, Springdale Fire Department, AR

“I put NAVI through a real scenario, including a heavy call I brought up. It recognized right away that it was heavy, and instead of pushing me anywhere, it asked what kind of help I wanted. I said a peer, someone who's been there. It respected that. I was impressed.”

JC PrellezoRetired Miami-Dade Police Department K9 Sergeant. Founder, 3AMFOG

The Team

Built by people who've
been in the room.

Neurovus was not built in a boardroom. It was built by people who understand what it costs to carry a weight nobody talks about.

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
Founder & CEO
LinkedIn

A firefighter and trauma recovery advocate, Gary built Neurovus after witnessing firsthand the silent accumulation of stress that precedes breakdown in first responder communities. His work bridges the lived experience of emergency response with a systems-builder's understanding of where awareness tools fail. Neurovus is his answer to the question no one was asking early enough: what does drift look like before anyone has to ask for help?

Pamela Roberts
Pamela Roberts
Co-Founder & VP Marketing
LinkedIn

Pamela brings enterprise-scale marketing leadership to Neurovus. At Marriott Corporation she led global strategy across all programs with a $25M budget, including landmark partnerships with the NFL, NBA, and PGA. Her track record of building brand trust at institutional scale shapes how Neurovus shows up for every department, partner, and first responder it serves.

Krisn Ramcharitar
Krisn Ramcharitar
Chief Technology Officer

15+ years building secure, HIPAA compliant cloud platforms

Read bio

A cloud-native infrastructure architect with over 15 years building secure, scalable systems, Krisn has served as CTO across multiple healthcare technology ventures with deep expertise in zero-trust architecture, HIPAA-compliant platform engineering, and AI/ML infrastructure. He understands that privacy-first architecture isn't a feature, it's the foundation.

Marie Gumá
Marie Gumá, MS, NCIT
Co-Investigator & Clinical Lead

Creator of the Gumá Method™, doctoral researcher in first responder neurobiology

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Founder of Command Counseling Center and doctoral researcher in first responder neurobiology. Creator of the Guma Method™ and author of the Clinical Recommendation Protocol for the NADF. A decade of embedded practice with firefighters, EMTs, law enforcement, and dispatchers. "Not a mental health crisis, a neurological injury crisis."

Dr. Richard Popwell
Dr. Richard Popwell, MD
Medical Director

Board certified neurologist, US Air Force veteran

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Board-certified neurologist, US Air Force veteran, and physician executive and entrepreneur with over 25 years of clinical and leadership experience across military, government, not-for-profit, private, and academic healthcare organizations. Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Co-Founder and CMO of DocSide Inc. Provides neurological oversight of the NeuroAdaptive Drift Framework.

Ken Fay
Ken Fay
Chief Storytelling Officer & Head of Public Relations

Emmy Award winning storyteller and narrative strategist

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Emmy Award-winning storyteller, creative director, and narrative strategist with decades spanning commercial advertising, documentary film, brand campaigns, and corporate communications. His Emmy reflects both the vision and execution discipline he brings to every project. At Neurovus, Ken leads public relations and narrative strategy. He ensures the story of a platform built to protect first responders reaches the audiences who need to hear it most.

Muagututia Tuala II
Muagututia Tuala II
Director of First Responder Community Outreach & Wellness Engagement

Firefighter paramedic, 15+ years on the job, founder of Tautua Fitness

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Firefighter paramedic, certified fitness and nutrition coach, and nonprofit leader with over 15 years of active emergency response experience and a multi-platform presence reaching first responders and Polynesian communities worldwide. As founder and head coach of Tautua Fitness, he has built a coaching platform grounded in resilience, performance, and identity, helping firefighters and paramedics build long-term health through structured training and real accountability. At Neurovus, Muagututia leads first responder community outreach and wellness engagement, building the trust relationships inside fire and EMS culture that make early awareness and voluntary support possible.

Leigh J. Mack
Leigh J. Mack, MD, PhD
FDA Regulatory Strategy & Clinical Research Advisor

Oxford trained physician scientist, FDA regulatory strategy

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Physician-scientist and board-certified clinical research fellow with an MD and PhD from the University of Oxford, and a Certified Principal Investigator designation from the Academy of Physicians in Clinical Research since 2016. Decades of experience at the intersection of FDA regulatory compliance, AI-enabled platform design, and clinical trial execution, having supported FDA 510(k) pathways and designed protocols for diagnostic, therapeutic, and digital health technologies. A volunteer firefighter and EMT. Advises Neurovus on regulatory positioning and clinical research strategy, ensuring the platform's architecture and claims remain defensibly aligned with FDA general wellness guidance and Software as a Medical Device classification frameworks as the platform moves toward pilot deployment and peer-reviewed publication.

Don Cox
Don Cox
AI Governance, Healthcare Compliance & Federal Health Strategy

Former CIO of SAMHSA, a $4B federal agency

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Transformational technology executive with 25 years of CIO and CISO leadership across federal government, national healthcare systems, and regulated enterprise environments. As CIO of SAMHSA, directed technology strategy for a $4B federal agency and served as primary technology liaison across FDA, CMS, NIH, CDC, and HRSA. As CISO at Mednax, led enterprise cybersecurity across 25,000 employees in all 50 states.

Jonathan Christie
Jonathan Christie
Public Sector & Enterprise Risk

Led $30M+ cybersecurity programs for Canada’s Department of National Defence

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Technology strategist and cybersecurity leader with over 30 years guiding large-scale digital transformation across government and enterprise. Led cloud and cybersecurity programs valued at over $30M for Canada's Department of National Defence. Ensures the platform's governance architecture meets the standards required by institutional buyers.

Stephen Balaban
Stephen Balaban, CLEE
Strategic Advisor, Public Safety Adoption & Government Markets

Public safety adoption and government market strategy

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Brings deep expertise in public safety adoption, agency trust, pilot strategy, privacy and surveillance-risk positioning, and government-market strategy. His background navigating public sector and foundation pathways gives Neurovus a capital-efficient and institutionally credible path to pilot deployment and agency-level scale.

Cody Jacox
Cody Jacox, PT, DPT
Clinical Advisor, Cardiopulmonary & Autonomic Health

Doctor of Physical Therapy in cardiopulmonary and autonomic health

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Doctor of Physical Therapy specializing in cardiopulmonary rehabilitation, autonomic health, and the clinical translation of emerging wearable technologies. Advises Neurovus on the cardiopulmonary and autonomic dimensions of the NeuroAdaptive Drift Framework, ensuring the platform's physiological signal architecture reflects current clinical science and real-world implementation standards.

Dr. David Hopper
Dr. David Hopper, PT, DPT
Biometric Wearables & HRV Research

Published heart rate variability and wearables researcher

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Clinician, physiology professor, and published researcher working at the intersection of biometric health optimization, heart rate variability science, and wearable technology clinical translation. Adjunct faculty at two universities and a nationally recognized speaker on HRV and sleep medicine. Applies real-time HRV and wearable biometric data as both a treatment guidance instrument and an objective outcomes measure, with published works on HRV methodology and clinical application. Advises Neurovus on the biometric wearable research layer of the NeuroAdaptive Drift Framework, ensuring HRV and physiological signal design reflects current clinical science and emerging wearable research standards.


Straight Answers

Common questions.

What is Neurovus?

Neurovus is a recovery intelligence platform built for firefighters and first responders. It reads sleep, heart rate variability, and resting heart rate from the wearable a responder already wears, compares them to that person's own baseline, and reflects any drift back to them privately through NAVI, a conversational AI companion.

Who is Neurovus for?

Firefighters, paramedics and EMTs, police officers, dispatchers, and the departments that lead them. Individual responders can join the founding pilot directly. Departments can join the Q1 2027 pilot cohort.

Can my department see my data?

No. Raw wearable readings stay inside Neurovus systems and never reach the department, command, or our AI provider. Departments that run a pilot see only anonymous, aggregate trends, never an individual.

Is Neurovus therapy or a medical device?

No. Neurovus is a general wellness platform. It does not diagnose, treat, or monitor for crisis, and it does not replace peer support, an EAP, or a clinician. It gives responders earlier awareness of their own recovery patterns.

Who founded Neurovus?

Neurovus was founded by Gary Roberts, a firefighter with 20 years at Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue, who serves as Founder and CEO.

How much does it cost?

The founding pilot is free for individual responders during the beta on iPhone and Android, with notice before any billing starts. Department pilot terms are covered on a pilot call.

Backers and Programs
A portfolio company of #7 VC Firm in the World

Neurovus is a general wellness platform. It is not a medical or emergency service and does not diagnose, treat, or monitor for crisis.

In crisis? Call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. In an emergency, call 911.

Gary Roberts

Helping first responders build recovery into readiness | 20 Years, Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue | Founder & CEO, Neurovus | Built NAVI to track each firefighter’s drift from their own baseline

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