Presence+ equips everyone in the work of healing and flourishing.

Thirty one years of instructional systems

In 1995, Thomas Cunningham had just finished his master's degree in Instructional Systems Development. He was working on education by simulation and computer-assisted on-the-job training. After a 31-year career starting several tech companies, he now works full time as Chief Strategy Officer at Divine Mercy University.

Thomas was involved in a startup doing bladder cancer research in 2024 and became fascinated by how AI could improve recall of deep long term and short term institutional memory in that field. The transfer to DMU was obvious. Over 25 years, Divine Mercy University has accumulated memory from its own work and from its access to thousands of years of a deep Catholic anthropology. And that memory is not stagnant. Holy men and women continue to contribute to both the anthropological and the scientific advancement of that knowledge every day.

Presence+ has been a two year effort to answer a single question: how do we bring this institution into the modern age of learning? The first tool we created is Schola which enables the rapid retrieval of institutional memory, and the quick processing of that memory in the age of AI. That is the first gift to us of AI. It's up to us and our students to let that expand or contract our work in the service of the church.

The Presence+ phone app

"I came up with several ground rules for this new app concept I had. The first was that it had to be quiet and not overly stimulating. The second was that it had to help me with where I always needed help — organization with tasks, journals, and goals I could share." — Tom Cunningham, on the initial app goals

The app was shared and expanded. Quickly came the ability for information sharing with coaches, therapists, and even parents. Later came the desire to receive good and healthy news, regular learning content, and directed prayer in different formats. 

Practice management for therapists, coaches, and spiritual directors

It became clear that a practice management dashboard was needed to interact with the clients on the front end in the app. Tom hired a professional firm — run by a devout Catholic, and at the forefront of building vibe-coding tools for developers — to help build the software as a service that lets clinicians, coaches, and spiritual directors work with the app.

We studied the tools and features of every major practice management product and decided to build a superior one. It handles the operational work: scheduling, billing, documentation, and appointment management. In a feature-to-feature comparison, Presence+ practice management matches TherapyNotes, Blueprint.ai, and SimplePractice.

What the DMU nexus added

Yes, we built a practice management app as good as the big guys. But several features exist only because of the nexus with DMU:

• Regular outcome measures
• Shared learning
• Shared or assigned journaling, goal setting, and assessments
• Built to serve the STEP model of care

Coaching software, spiritual direction software

To properly implement the STEP model, we created pared-down versions of the clinician software built for coaches, spiritual directors, volunteers, and anyone who can act as an active listener or accompaniment minister.

Ministry management for parishes and universities

We showed the product to FOCUS and the Catholic Campus Ministry Association. They loved it — and they saw better ways for their own work to live inside the Presence+ system. That was the birth of the Ministry Management Platform.

With these three phases in place, the whole system comes into view: every helper gets a practice interface, every organization gets a management platform, every person served gets an app — and all three doors open onto the same core.

Cross Connect

There is a whole world of help. Cross Connect lets ministry leaders bring the people and education they select into their parish — while filtering out the help that isn't a good match for their organization.

Ready for Marketing Launch

Products above began beta testing in May. We have just recently started a pilot launch with clients. The products are ready for a concentrated sales and marketing launch phase pending funding.

Melete

In parallel with the software came the search for better ways to present DMU's anthropology to anyone in the ministry of healing and helping.

Tom is in the fortunate position of having decades of experience training students by simulation. It may be that AI's greatest contribution to learning will be in creating simulators for it.

Pathway Studio

Another intervention our practice management competitors are building: strategy support during the therapy session itself.

Pathway Studio is our answer. A clinician designs a care pathway on a visual canvas, and the engine re-routes it as the person's session-by-session outcome and alliance scores move — with every suggested intervention carrying its source and evidence grade. The measurement already works. Pathway Studio is the part that acts on it.