ClearMask’s story: a life-changing surgery for a Deaf co-founder and how it all started
Learn more about ClearMask’s origin story as the team celebrates four years at ClearMask, LLC.
Did you know that ClearMask was founded years before the pandemic started in 2020? The ClearMask story began in 2015 when one of our co-founders, Allysa Dittmar, was set to undergo a life-changing surgery. As a deaf person, Allysa relies heavily on visual communication, facial expressions, and lip reading to communicate. The hospital scheduled an American Sign Language interpreter for her entire surgery experience, and she prepared for the surgery, nervous as any patient.
However, on the date of her procedure, the hospital made an administrative scheduling error, and her sign language interpreter never showed up. That’s when things got really scary for Allysa. She was left to navigate an operating room full of covered faces and silence. She couldn’t communicate with anyone and she had no idea what was happening.
““It was a really dehumanizing, scary, and confusing experience. I was already nervous enough for the surgery. Not being unable to understand what’s going on, or even see a reassuring smile, was very difficult. Miscommunication can even cause adverse surgical outcomes; in my experience, I was unable to answer the standard pre-operating safety questions such as, which side of the body are we operating on, what are your allergies, and more. In those moments, I wasn’t human,” said Allysa.”
Following her surgery, Allysa returned home, googled “transparent mask” and was shocked to find zero transparent, clear face masks available for sale. After such an isolating experience, Allysa knew that she could not let this happen to anyone else. Along with Aaron Hsu, ClearMask’s current CEO and co-founder, the pair brainstormed a solution together to make healthcare more human again: the ClearMask™ Transparent Surgical Mask.
Allysa and Aaron recruited two more Johns Hopkins students to join the team, and the four co-founders met every Friday night and weekends to develop the product and build the company. ClearMask, LLC was officially founded on September 1, 2017. The team built hundreds of prototypes and interviewed countless patients, providers, and healthcare administrators to create the ClearMask™ Transparent Surgical Mask: a comfortable, fully transparent mask with medical-grade protection.
For several years, the team prepared their product for FDA submission. In April 2020, their hard work paid off: the ClearMask™ Transparent Surgical Mask became the world’s first and only fully transparent, clear face mask on the market and the first to be FDA cleared by the United States Food and Drug Administration. Two milestones at once!
Over the course of the pandemic, the team of four grew to over 250 staff on the manufacturing and fulfillment side, and has helped many communities in need - from national and state governments to hospitals and schools. By providing full access to the face in a masked world, ClearMask™ has benefitted different groups of people, including deaf and hard of hearing individuals, children, older people, and many others who heavily rely on visual communication.
The past few years of ClearMask’s commitment and hard work have made an enormous impact on the world. Oftentimes, we are asked how ClearMask™ came into existence, and many are surprised to find out there was no such thing as a transparent face mask a few years ago until ClearMask was founded in 2017.