Like all great products, PATCH started out as an idea to solve a hard problem. Specifically, it was a military problem close to the PATCH inventors, Dana De Coster, a recently retired Navy SEAL, and Maeve Garigan, a Johns Hopkins engineer who spent her career supporting elite military commands.

"I was developing a tag to track and monitor beef cattle, so it was lightweight, rugged and easy to use. I knew there had to be military applications," explained Maeve. "I've spent over 15 years working for the military and there is always a need for high-fidelity tracking in small packages, so I knew the tech made sense. We just had to figure out the best way to apply it."

Maeve and Dana first collaborated in 2015, when she was working with Navy SEALs to deploy new technologies, and Dana was the Operations Officer at the command overseeing West Coast SEAL Teams.

"Maeve and I had a project where we used backpackable drones for reconnaissance, " explained Dana. "It was real pleasure working with Maeve, she is a creative and powerful problem-solver and really delivers the goods. I was excited to work on another project with her and continue serving the Special Operations community that we both love."

PATCH was originally envisioned as a solution to securely track and monitor partner force members, a problem that Dana became intimately familiar with when serving as the Operations Officer (J3) for a Special Operations Task Force in Iraq. "I had already deployed to Iraq multiple times and it was like watching the same bad movie over again. We had an ongoing problem with maintaining situational awareness and an accurate operational picture of all of our friendly assets."

"We originally styled the PATCH as an Iraqi Special Operations Forces badge," explained Maeve. "I wanted something that wasn't just easy to wear but something that people really wanted to wear—or had to wear. Making the device a replacement for a patch that service members wore on their uniform made total sense."

"We went ahead and patented a wearable radio that is designed as a flag, shield or oval, so we have the flexibility to create a variety of badge or patch designs to fit our customers' unique needs."

Once the patch concept was in place, the idea quickly evolved to the US flag patch in the current PATCH design.

"We were hearing from our friends in the Special Operations community that US service members needed a way to securely communicate off-grid at a tactical level," explained Dana. "They were using Wi-Fi , WhatsApp... methods that aren't robust or secure. So it was more than just tracking and monitoring, we needed to give people comms. Luckily, Maeve and her engineering team had already figured out how to create a mesh network for communicating totally off-grid—without cell service, Wi-Fi or satellite."

"Folks downrange these days have smartphones or similar personal computing devices" said Maeve, "which really opens up possibilities. We added a Bluetooth chip to our tracker design, and an Android app that provides a user interface for texting, location sharing and activity monitoring. The activity monitoring is based on accelerometers and gyroscopes, just like a FitBit or Apple Watch."

"We also use end-to-end encryption with 256-bit AES. That's Type 1 capable cryptography, similar to that used by government agencies. No one is going to be able to decrypt what you send on PATCH. We also don't store any data that a user sends during a session. All texts, locations and activity information is wiped when you close the app on your phone. That's critically important for information security and data privacy, which is a huge issue these days with big tech companies collecting and exploiting user information. We simply won't do that, it's completely against our ethics and values."

The first PATCH prototype was built in six weeks for an elite, invite-only military technology demonstration event in June 2021. Dana's video below was made during this event and shows the use of this very first PATCH and PATCH app.

"We are super excited to launch PATCH," said Maeve. "It is incredibly rewarding to solve real problems for real people, and do it in a way that aligns with our shared values of teamwork, integrity and the constant pursuit of excellence."

Visit www.builtbyroper.com to learn more about the PATCH inventors and their team's innovative and important work.