Reframe: How 2 Georgia Tech Grads Help People Stop Drinking

ATLANTA, GA — As mental health professionals across the nation express concerns about the stress of the pandemic increasing people's dependence on alcohol, two Georgia Tech grads created an app to address this exact problem.

Ziyi Gao and Vedant Pradeep met in a chemical engineering class at Georgia Tech. The two were also in Tech's CREATE-X startup launch program for student entrepreneurs, and worked together on an app to help people with obsessive-compulsive disorder recognize and potentially stop their compulsions, in part because of Pradeep's personal experiences with OCD, he said.

"You have these compulsions that come up and when you're in the middle of it, you feel like it's going to be endless and you also feel like ... you understand what's going on but you're not sure about what to do or how long it's going to last," Pradeep said. "That's when we decided, 'Maybe we need to do something about that.'"

But doctors at Emory University and Johns Hopkins, who the duo consulted with for advice on this project, said this concept would be more effective for people struggling with alcohol dependence rather than OCD.

"It actually made sense [to switch gears] because cravings are like close cousins of compulsions," Pradeep said. "After talking to about 100 more health care professionals in the next few days after that, we decided to shift over to this space."

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic also helped the co-founders decide to shift focus toward an affordable app for alcohol addiction, Pradeep said. Initially, they were catering the app toward substance abuse recovery centers as an aftercare program — but when the outbreak of COVID-19 hit in March 2020, they decided to create what Pradeep called a "digital recovery center," which became the Reframe app.

"The people coming on our app were not really people who wouldn't ever go to a recovery center. They were people that wanted to help themselves but wouldn't even go get therapeutic help, and this was a medium that they could use to help themselves," Pradeep said. "The pandemic has hit people really, really hard."

Gao and Pradeep talked to more than 700 engineers, doctors, patients and business advisors over about three years to launch Reframe in July 2020 — currently only available on the Apple Store —with monthly plans costing under $10 per month. Pradeep said going to a recovery center can cost between $10,000 and $20,000 per month, so they wanted to offer Reframe's cost "at least an order of magnitude lower."

The duo based the app on cognitive behavioral research, building on four main ideas: structured guidance, integrated tools, repetition/reward and community. Gao and Pradeep worked with Emory University and Johns Hopkins to develop a 120-day evidence-based program with more than 50 integrated tools, daily tasks and activities — with rewards for completing them— and a subscriber community forum.

"We wanted to make sure that it's easy to convert the knowledge you have into action ... We wanted it to be as integrated as possible," Pradeep said. "For this low of a price, I do think it is the most value that you can get."

Since Reframe's launch, the app has garnered over 2,500 subscribers — some of which have told Gao and Pradeep that using Reframe changed their life.

"I came across this app by accident; but there was something/someone looking over me that lead me to its path. This app saved my life, and grounded me back to existence. Not only does it motivate you to live/love a sober life, it helps break down how the human body and mind works, in a interesting way," one review reads. "Best of luck to y’all on whatever journey you have in front of you, the answers aren't at the bottom of the bottle and this app showed me that."

Pradeep and Gao said these messages from subscribers are what drives them. In fact, the two are planning to add options for overcoming other addictions and disorders, including binge eating and opioid use. They are hoping to expand the program into binge eating within the next six months, Pradeep told Patch.

"At this point we've received hundreds of emails and other communications from people who told us about how [Reframe has] changed their lives and their families," Pradeep said. "That's the really incredible part that's been really pushing us forward now."