Bios

Founder and President, Debra Callabresi

Debra Callabresi, president and founder of N-tonic, has been at the forefront of the internet since 1995. In 1997, she was the creative director and producer for the Absolut Panushka project, the first significant web project to bring the art of the moving image to the internet. Working with early movement and web venue technologies, this project was highly awarded in both the online and film communities and threw wide open the doors to the potential of the internet in expanding beyond pure informational exchange. She is also an Academy Award-nominated film producer and recipient of an Intel Research Council AIM Committee Grant in conjunction with Christine Panushka (creator and department co-chair, USC Animation and Digital Arts). Ms. Callabresi holds an MFA in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts and a BA in Media with a minor in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego.

Ms. Callabresi has started several production companies – for animation and large format film – and co-founded a technology startup company that evolved into Green Plum, which was acquired by Pivotal. N-tonic is the spinoff from the early days of Green Plum as Metapa, and is a company focused on blending creativity in art and technology in modern delivery platforms. N-tonic specializes in design and development for internet-driven applications and devices, with an emphasis on creating new web-based application technologies for internet specific projects. Our vast knowledge of both design and technologies assists us in finding the unique balance between form and function for each project we undertake.

N-tonic’s current Online Home Test Kit Ordering and Results System was initially developed for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health “I KNOW” project in 2008, and is still in use to this day. The success of this program was published in January 2013, in the American Journal of Public Health Field Action Report, “There’s No Place Like Home: First-Year Use of the ‘I Know’ Home Testing Program for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea." The program was adapted for a two-year NIH research grant in the San Francisco Bay area, and the most current version of the project is currently being used by the State of California in Alameda, Sacramento and San Diego Counties’ departments of public health. The state is assisting these counties with high rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea infection through utilization of our successful and cost-saving home testing program for their county health departments. Los Angeles County plans to launch a version of our program for their MSM site, which will include HIV testing services. N-tonic has also participated in other mobile medical technology projects, including HealthBox, an international patient-driven care tablet application for assisting underserved and often illiterate patients in remote areas of the world by technology-aided self-assessment of their individual health care issues and providing education and counseling for taking positive steps in their own health. Ms. Callabresi was also a co-investigator and technical lead for the 2014-2016 Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) Innovations grant funding the Prevention At Home (PAH) project managed by The George Washington University. The most recent version of the home testing platform is being utilized by the Denver Health “Test Yourself Colorado” program. Added features include ID verification, offering free and paid tests, multiple tests per kit for 3 extra-genital locations, and administrative workflow plus eligibility configuration and settings.

Look for us at the 2020 STD Prevention Conference in September, where Ms. Callabresi will be co-presenting "No Place Like Home: The 'I Know' Program and the Rewards of Home STD Testing."