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Peer recovery support, 24/7, at the touch of a button Electronic recovery record - built for people, not billing codes 350+ data points feed the Recovery Support Index Backed by Ben Franklin, Penn Medicine & Wharton's Fund for Health Founded in Philadelphia by recovery scientist Robert Ashford “Everyone is in recovery from something” Peer recovery support, 24/7, at the touch of a button Electronic recovery record - built for people, not billing codes 350+ data points feed the Recovery Support Index Backed by Ben Franklin, Penn Medicine & Wharton's Fund for Health Founded in Philadelphia by recovery scientist Robert Ashford “Everyone is in recovery from something”
Company Profile / Digital Health / Philadelphia
RecoveryLink logo

RecoveryLink

The peer recovery process, finally built native to software.

Philadelphia, PA. A digital recovery company that treats a phone call at 2 a.m. as a feature, not an edge case - and a recovery record as something that belongs to the person, not the provider.

2019Founded
~12Team
24/7Support
350+Data points
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The Story

A support system that doesn't keep office hours

Where recovery science meets a login screen.

It's a bad Tuesday. Not a crisis exactly - those get numbers and hotlines. Just the slow, ordinary kind of hard that arrives at an hour nobody scheduled. The clinic is closed. The next appointment is nine days out. This is the moment most healthcare software was never built for, because most healthcare software was built around the calendar, the billing code, and the waiting room. RecoveryLink starts here, in the gap. Its whole premise is that recovery happens in the moments between appointments, and that the tools ought to be there too.

RecoveryLink is a Philadelphia company, founded in 2019, that makes an online suite for people navigating recovery - from substance use, from mental health struggles, from disordered eating, from trauma - and for the organizations trying to serve them. The pitch is disarmingly plain: connect individuals and providers, and let them find and deliver peer-based support at the touch of a button, around the clock. No triage desk. No shame-inducing intake ritual. A laptop, a phone, or a kiosk, and a trained peer on the other end.

We believe everyone is in recovery from something.
RecoveryLink - company philosophy

That line does more work than it looks. It isn't a slogan so much as a design decision. Most behavioral-health products begin with a gate: are you sick enough, diagnosed enough, insured enough to qualify? RecoveryLink widens the door instead of narrowing it. The result is a platform that treats recovery not as a clinical episode with a start and end date, but as an individualized process - supported, in the company's own framing, by both technology and human connection.

2019Founded in Philly
3Co-founders
$550KRaised (local)
100%HIPAA compliant
The Idea

An electronic recovery record

One word changed, everything downstream changed with it.

The health-tech world runs on the electronic health record - a system, if we're honest, optimized for billing and liability as much as for care. RecoveryLink's quiet radical move was to build an electronic recovery record instead. The record follows the person, not the provider. It captures more than 350 data points that feed a proprietary Recovery Support Index, so progress can be seen, measured, and improved rather than merely filed.

Around that record sits the rest of the suite: asynchronous digital training, one-on-one telerecovery peer sessions over video, phone or text, live video group support, and provider dashboards designed to cut administrative burden so peer specialists can spend their time on people. A recovery plan gets built across the things that actually govern a life - housing, employment, health, relationships, daily routine - not just symptoms.

What you can actually do with it

The Suite

Seven parts, one platform

Built native to the peer recovery process - not bolted onto clinical software.

01

Electronic Recovery Record

A record built around the person's recovery journey, following them across providers and capturing 350+ data points for feedback and analysis.

02

1-on-1 Telerecovery

Direct connection to trained peer specialists via video, phone, text or app, to craft a personalized recovery plan across the social determinants of a life.

03

Live Group Video Support

Facilitated group-based recovery sessions delivered over live video - offered free during the COVID-19 pandemic.

04

Asynchronous Training

On-demand recovery training and educational modules for both individuals and peer support staff.

05

Provider Dashboards & Contact Center

A responsive web dashboard and omnichannel contact center that lets organizations manage services and reduce paperwork.

06

Recovery Support Index

A proprietary analytics tool that turns the platform's data points into a measurable picture of recovery outcomes.

The People

A scientist, a technologist, a strategist

Three co-founders, one unusually academic origin story.

RA
Robert Ashford
Co-Founder & CEO
A recovery scientist with 50+ peer-reviewed papers and the founding editor of the Journal of Recovery Science. He runs a peer-reviewed journal and a venture-backed startup at the same time - and treats them as two halves of a single job: publish the science, ship the product.
CH
Chris Hart
Co-Founder & CIO
Leads the secure technology infrastructure behind a platform that has to be both always-on and fully HIPAA compliant.
BC
Brent Canode
Co-Founder & CMO
A recovery community organization director and nonprofit strategist who connects the product to the organizations on the front line of recovery.
No matter how you engage, your privacy is our priority.
RecoveryLink
The Money

Bootstrapped first, backed second

Two years on its own before the first check - and even then, all local.

RecoveryLink bootstrapped for its first two years before raising, and when it did raise, it raised close to home: Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, and the Fund for Health - a $5M partnership between Penn Medicine and the Wharton Social Impact Initiative aimed at businesses tackling the social determinants of health in economically disadvantaged Philadelphia. Reported cumulative funding sat around $550,000, all from local investors.

Total raised
~$550K local
Team size
~12 people
Data points / record
350+
Availability
24 / 7
The Users

Who's on the platform

Recovery organizations

Recovery community organizations like SOS Recovery Community Organization and Unity Recovery run services and manage their peer workforce through RecoveryLink.

Providers & employers

Behavioral health providers and employers license the platform to extend peer recovery support to the people they serve and employ.

Individuals in recovery

People recovering from substance use, mental health challenges, disordered eating and trauma - who can also buy 1-on-1 peer services directly.

Peer specialists

Trained peers who deliver the actual support, with dashboards designed to hand time back from admin to human connection.

The Record

How it unfolded

2019RecoveryLink is founded in Philadelphia; the team bootstraps the platform.
2020Co-founders formalize the company; group recovery sessions offered free through the pandemic.
2021-01Named a runner-up on Technical.ly's RealLIST Startups for Philadelphia.
2021-02Profiled in Technical.ly on destigmatizing recovery and proving care management's market value.
2021-08Ben Franklin Technology Partners investment brings reported cumulative funding to ~$550K.
Off the Record

Five things worth knowing

Journal & startup, same desk

The founder built a peer-reviewed academic journal and a venture-backed company at once, treating them as one job.

A deliberate reframe

The "electronic recovery record" is a pointed rewrite of the clinical "electronic health record."

Free when it mattered

Group recovery sessions were offered free during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Runs on kiosks too

Laptops, tablets, smartphones - and public kiosks, meeting people wherever privacy is possible.

The Return

Back to that bad Tuesday

The clinic is still closed. The next appointment is still nine days out. What's different is what the person does next. Instead of waiting - or worse - they open a laptop, or a phone, or step up to a kiosk, and a trained peer answers. A recovery record that belongs to them, not to a building, remembers where they left off. The support that used to live behind office hours now lives in the pocket. RecoveryLink didn't cure the bad Tuesday. It just made sure nobody has to face it alone at an hour the system forgot to staff. In a category most software overlooked, that's the whole product - and, quietly, the point.

recoverypeer supporttelehealthdigital healthhipaaphiladelphiabehavioral health
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Links, socials & further reading

Everything to go deeper on RecoveryLink.