CareHome Technologies, a Wilmington health tech startup, has been accepted into Project Healthcare, a healthcare accelerator program in Nashville. Company founder and CEO AJ Trelease says the program will bring the company one step closer to going to market. 

Founded in 2023, CareHome Health Technologies' flagship product is a Keurig-like smart device that dispenses medication and water on a schedule to reduce medication mix-ups. The device is managed through an app called Care Circle, which sends caregivers notifications. 

Trelease, motivated by his grandmother's struggles with managing prescriptions, aimed to create a solution that would ease the burden for seniors. Eventually, he built a prototype of the dispensing device, which he named Graciela after his grandmother.  

“The age tech industry has been severely underserved in terms of modern-day technology,” Trelease said, “and this kind of technology should have existed for seniors 10 to 15 years ago.”

The company is already testing the app interface, features and usability with users, and plans to launch it by the end of the year, Trelease said. 

Even without the launch of the medication and hydration dispensing device, the app, which allows caregivers to set medication schedules and missed-dose alerts, will still be useful while the company continues testing the latest Graciela prototype. 

The company’s acceptance into Project Healthcare’s fall cohort, a 12-week accelerator program run by the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, is an opportunity to validate its go-to-market strategy, Trelease said, as well as gain momentum in the B2B space. The accelerator program begins next month.

“Nashville is a pretty big scene for (healthcare), and being that we want to sell our devices eventually in the B2B space, this is a perfect avenue to at least have the conversations up front,” Trelease said, “and of course, get in front of investors that help us get from this point to close our pre-seed raise.”

The 2026 fall cohort accepted into the accelerator program includes 15 companies, according to the website. Founders from the last three cohorts reported raising over $2.3 million while participating in the program. Notably, CareHome is the only company from North Carolina included in the fall cohort.

“Bootstrapping a health tech medical device regulated by the FDA can only get you so far if you’re not coming from like a lot of capital, like me,” Trelease said. 

“We’ve relied a lot on the pitch competitions and grants that we won primarily last year to get us to this point,” he added. “It’s been great. We’ve gotten a lot of traction being as scrappy as we are.” 

According to Trelease, the company recently closed two angel investments, taking the startup further along in its pre-seed raise cycle. 

The company is actively seeking more users to participate in app testing, Trelease added. 

“If anyone’s interested and wants a way to check in on their senior to make sure they actually took their medication,” he said, “we’re always taking more people.”