FRED

The first responder for first responders

FRED·First Responder Emotional Decompression AI
An overview for prospective partners and investors
The reality of the job

The weight doesn't clock out when the shift does.

1 in 6
have had thoughts of suicide because of the job
Four times the rate of the public they serve. NYS needs assessment, 6,003 responders, 2025
80%
name stigma as a barrier to getting care
NYS needs assessment, 2025
72%
name confidentiality concerns as a barrier to getting care
NYS needs assessment, 2025
97%
say it would help, if it were free and easy to get
Individual therapy. Peer support 93%. NYS needs assessment, 2025

How can we utilize AI to empower departments and first responders?

Meet FRED™

First Responder Emotional Decompression AI

The Emotional Decompression bot. A confidential place for firefighters, EMS, police and dispatchers to set a call down, any hour. His job is simple: hold the space while somebody offloads, before the weight settles in.

Confidential and anonymous Built on national peer-support standards Grounded in the evidence

A place to put the call down.

  1. 1Stigma→Nobody finds out.
  2. 2Too hard to get help→Free. Any hour. No appointment.
  3. 3Nowhere to put it→He is there in the moment.
FRED™Private
Rough one today?
Yeah. Peds call. Can’t shake it.
That’s one of the hardest there is. You don’t have to carry it clean. Want to walk through it, or just set it down for a minute?
Set it down.

A real exchange.

Built for the job

Guardrails in the code

Tested 1,000+ times on 275 scenarios

Fitzpatrick, Darcy & Vierhile, JMIR Mental Health, 2017 (depression). Mokhtari Masoumi Alamdarloo et al., npj Digital Medicine, 2026: meta-analysis of 48 randomized trials and 28,071 people, small but significant reductions in depression, anxiety and stress. FRED is decompression and peer support, not treatment. Testing: 275 hand-written scenarios, over 1,000 evaluations, re-run after every change.

The AI Data Engine

From data to deployment.

A first responder operational data engine, powered by AI. It captures the separate systems a department already runs, resolves every call to the crew that ran it, measures the load autonomously, and points the support you already pay for where it is needed.

Three systems
DispatchCalls by type and severityUnits and calls. No people.
SchedulingShifts, mandatory overtime, who is on which unitPeople and units. No calls.
Retro dataPeer-reviewed weights: sleep loss, forced overtime, call severityKnown. Never applied to your data.
One engine
The engine Joins, credits, measures, flags
One read
ABC Station 1 Station 2 Station 3 Station 4

Recovery sleep, late-night calls · Strain hours, overtime, volume · Exposure call type, severity

This week
Peer team goes outStation 3, B shift, before anyone asks
Backfill scheduledRelief where the load actually is
Weekly brief to the chiefDrivers named, drafted for signature
Existing resources deployedChaplain, clinician, EAP, where they are needed

  • Dispatch: calls, no people
  • Scheduling: people, no calls
  • The research: known, never applied
Engine 7 ran a cardiac arrest at 02:14. Nobody named.

  • Credited to the crew that rode
  • Weighted on a research-informed model
  • Never guessed onto a person

  • One colour per crew
  • Groups of at least five
  • No number, no name, no words

  • Peer team to the hot crew
  • Backfill against the real load
  • Resources you already pay for
The AI Agentic Layer

Most tools just track the data, but none of them act on it.

It drafts. A human decides and sends.

An agent is AI that does the work rather than reporting on it.

It ingests the week, makes sense of it, and helps the wellness officer act: briefs, plans, deployment. Then it stops and waits for a person.

FRED WorkingWaiting for a person
  • Read this week’s dispatch and staffing, weighted on the research
  • Joined every call to the crew that rode it
  • Station 3, B shift is running hot
  • Drafted the weekly brief and a peer-team plan
Draft · Weekly readiness brief To: the chief

Station 3, B shift is running hot this week. Two mandatory shifts and a fatality call. Recommend the peer team visits Tuesday and B shift is backfilled Wednesday night.

Nothing is sent until a person decides. Edit Approve and send
Overnight call credited to the shift that started the morning before Intake direct connection · agent on the department’s portal · spreadsheet upload A missing integration never blocks it
The bot and the engine

What it is, and what it fixes.

Front facing

The decompression bot

What a first responder actually opens, with the safety net built in. Confidential, 24 hours a day, no file and no name.

Lands on a responder’s phone
  1. Stigma
    An anonymous decompression bot
  2. The barrier to getting help
    Free, any hour, thirty seconds to start
  3. Resources nobody touches
    Routing to the peer team, chaplain and EAP
Underneath

The AI data engine

Reads the CAD and scheduling a department already produces, weights it on the research, and turns it into one honest readiness read.

Lands on a chief’s screen
  1. Resources deploy blind
    Anonymous readiness analytics, a colour per crew
  2. The data sits unused
    An agentic layer that joins all three systems
  3. Everything happens after the crisis
    Proactive deployment, before anybody asks
Three arms, one company

Deployment plan of action.

01 · The mission armFRED
02 · The backboneFRED Analytic Engine
03 · The front faceFRED +
In one line
In one lineResearch, development and free deployment.
In one lineThe data layer everything stands on. Fully licensable, under patent exploration.
In one lineThe flagship white-label app.
The flagship app

FRED +

The member app a department deploys: the decompression bot, the RED safety net, real booking and the command view. A few of the pieces are below. Launching October to December.

Walkthrough 02 · Line up backup

The easiest help a firefighter has ever gotten.

A real, vetted person. One tap. Under a minute. First responders get direct access to mental health care without alerting leadership or coworkers.

The old wayWeeks
Ask around the station Call the EAP line Leave a voicemail Wait for a callback Tell your captain Waitlist, six weeks Paperwork Try again later Maybe.

Weeks. Six people. Your captain.Every step is a reason to stop.

With FREDUnder a minute
01
You pick a time.
Off shift. No phone tag, no waitlist, no chain of command.
02
FRED already knows who fits you.
Three vetted providers, all first-responder-experienced.
6:12
FREDLine up backup
Pick a time.
Off shift. Your schedule, not theirs.
Monday7:00 p.m.
Tuesday6:30 p.m.
Thursday8:00 p.m.
No phone tag. No waitlist.
No chain of command.
Who fits you.
Three vetted, first-responder-experienced.
RB
Dr. R. Bell, LMHC
Clinician · trauma and EMDR
MO
M. Ortiz, LCSW
Clinician · former paramedic
AR
A. Reyes, PsyD
Clinician · sleep and shift work
Tuesday, 6:30 p.m. · Video
Booked.
Under a minute.
WhoDr. R. Bell, LMHC
WhenTuesday, 6:30 p.m.
WhereVideo, from home
Who was toldNobody
Nothing goes to your department.
03
Who was told: Nobody.
Nobody in your chain of command is told. Not your captain, not your crew.
Who is on the other end▾

Clinicians who actually get the job.

Not a blind EAP directory or a generic BetterHelp match. FRED unifies your department's vetted people and a clinician network we build for first-responder fluency, so nobody is handed to a stranger who has never heard a tone drop.

Dr. R. Bell, LMHCClinician · trauma & EMDR
Former paramedicFirst-responder caseload
Capt. J. MarreroPeer supporter · water calls
25 yrs on the jobCISM trained
Chaplain D. OrtizDept chaplain
Fireground chaplainOn call 24/7
Every person is vetted by your department or credentialed by us. Booking is confidential, and the match is built from your style and history, never a cold list.
Walkthrough 04 · The RED protocol

When acute language is heard, a trained human takes over.

FLRM listens for two things. Repeated language nudges the readiness band. Acute language, explicit intent, a stated plan, farewell wording, triggers the RED protocol below. FRED never diagnoses; a trained human decides, every time.

The FRED chat, read live
FREDPrivate session
Safety layer · live concern0.06
RED threshold at the marker (≥ 0.80) · reads attribution, not just words
Rough one tonight? I am right here if you want to set it down.
Press play to watch the safety layer read a real after-a-hard-call check-in.
What the on-call human gets
RED alert · confidential
Armed · monitoring. No alert fired.
1Hold & ground. FRED stops coaching.
2Alert the wellness team, never the chief.
3Minimal info only. No transcript.
4Dual-key unlock, fully audited.
✓A human confirms. Held until safe.

Trigger language means explicit intent, a stated plan, or farewell wording. No system reliably detects suicide risk, a trained human decides every time, and the app never tells a member help is coming unless a person has actually been reached.

The method behind this patents & research
Routing concerning language to a human sits on an established, peer-reviewed and patented field of NLP work: for example Pestian et al., 2017, Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior (up to 85% classification accuracy across 379 subjects), and the Cincinnati Children's NLP patent family (US Patent 10,204,707). A 2026 meta-analysis of 48 randomized trials found that less than half of the studies specifically addressed safety procedures, human backup, or adverse event monitoring. That gap is what the RED protocol exists to close. FRED's own method, FLRM, is being filed as a language-metric and routing method, deliberately not as a crisis-detection or suicide-prediction instrument. A trained human still decides every time.
Walkthrough 05 · Command, proactive deployment

See where a crew is running hot, and send help before it becomes a crisis.

Command sees readiness in aggregate, a colour per crew, never a name and never a word. The point isn't to watch people; it's to know where to send a resource early.

Department readiness · 9 stations NO SIGNAL
You knew something was wrong somewhere. You could not say where, or why, or who.
The future · one FRED, every service

The same engine, tuned to each service that carries the calls.

A firefighter, a medic, and a dispatcher do not carry the same calls the same way. Fire is live first, and each version builds from the same core, the same privacy, the same safety net.

Live first
Fire
Next
EMS
Next
Police
Future
Dispatch
Future
Nurses
Future
Military
Where this goes

What is already underway, and where it ends up.

01 · The research In negotiations with university research partners.
02 · The build Partnered with the Barry University AI Center.
03 · Distribution A nonprofit distribution partner, in progress.
04 · The pilot A South Florida fire department, October.
05 · The North Star The hotline for the fire service.
Research and build partners
Barry University
Research
AI Center at Barry University
Build

The ask.

01
Capital

To take FRED from a pilot in one department to a platform the fire service can run on. Build, clinical oversight, and the people to carry it.

02
Introductions

Departments, unions, and associations. The fastest way to a responder is through the people they already trust.

03
Operators who have done this

Investors and advisors who have built into public safety, behavioral health, or the government side of enterprise.

FRED is a confidential first step, grounded in peer support and science. It is not therapy, not a diagnosis, and not a crisis service, and it is honest about that everywhere it appears. Free FRED stores nothing.

You hold the line.
We hold the burden.

Jacob Slosbergas · former firefighter/EMT · Reflection Technologies DBA FRED · talkwithfred.com