flok | Innovation of Care

Welcome to flok.

We're reimagining care and research for inherited metabolic disorders through robust resources, patient-led science, and a commitment to transforming our collective health.

Join Us!

Who does flok serve?

If you have an inherited metabolic disorder or care for someone who does, flok is for you. flok was created for and by those who manage Classical Homocystinuria (HCU), Maple Syrup Urine Disease (MSUD), Phenylketonuria (PKU), Tyrosinemia, Organic Acidemias and Urea Cycle Disorders (UCDs).

These are rare, often severe conditions, which require lifelong treatment. Most are diagnosed through newborn screening and require a highly restrictive medical diet to prevent dangerous outcomes such as brain damage, coma, or death.

Why is flok necessary?

Despite the advantages of early diagnosis, our standards of care have not sufficiently progressed. flok will illuminate the lived experience of these conditions, empowering our community to improve care, inform research, and design more effective treatments.

Our current understanding of these conditions is limited: it's based on infrequent tests, a narrow diagnostic approach, and clinical data isolated from daily life. This isolates patients, slows research, and impedes progress.

flok will change this by combining patient-reported data with clinical, biometrics, and genetic records –guided by experts in the fields of medicine, genetics, ethics, and machine learning, and governed by our community.

We have the potential to learn more in the next 5 years than we have in the last 50 by unlocking the data of our lived experience with cutting edge data processing capabilities. This approach is truly revolutionary.

About our Research Strategy

flok provides the resources you need to manage your condition

the flok app

Backed by 35 years of research and dietary leadership, the flok app is the cornerstone of care for individuals managing an inherited disorder of protein metabolism.

Explore the app
Food Science

The baseline treatment for flok conditions is a low-protein diet. flok has been the primary resource of this data for 35 years and is guided by a staff dietitian and collaborations with partner organizations and Genetic Metabolic Dietitians International.

Explore our approach to food science
Community

By providing opportunities to connect, flok brings our community together to improve our lived experience. Some of these connections are in-person. Others are virtual. All of them are essential to our well-being and mental health as individuals and as a community.

Explore our community offerings

What People Say

Voices from our community

I can't wait for flok - I'm ready to be looked at as a whole person, not just a bunch of random unconnected data points.

DB, Adult with Classical HCU
When our daughter found out that "PKU Family Camp" was becoming flok camp, she said "that's nice, because instead of feeling like we are invited even though it's PKU camp, we feel like we belong, because it's for all of us."

SM, Parent of a child with MSUD

Our History & Team

Founded by the Leaders of a Movement

When Virginia Schuett, MS, RD first encountered PKU, one inherited disorder of protein metabolism, her patients were struggling to manage the medical diets they needed to thrive. In response, she developed The Low Protein Food List for PKU and with partners, two recipe books that introduced healthy, tasty, low-protein recipes to our community. In 1989, she founded National PKU News, with Dr. Robert Guthrie, founder of Newborn Screening, serving as an early board member.

Explore our history

Led by People Who Understand

We are more than advocates for those managing inherited disorders of protein metabolism, we are also members of the flok. Each member of our staff and board has deep personal ties to these disorders. We are rallying our community to continuously improve our care and accelerate scientific progress with a passion that can only come with firsthand understanding of the challenges of managing these disorders.

Learn more about our team here.

Young A. A schema of the pathophysiology of the inborn errors of metabolism. https://www.grepmed.com/images/5170 Web site. www.grepmed.com. Updated 2019. Accessed Nov 6, 2023

Welcome to flok.

Why is flok necessary?

flok will change this by combining patient-reported data with clinical, biometrics, and genetic records –guided by experts in the fields of medicine, genetics, ethics, and machine learning, and governed by our community.

flok provides the resources you need to manage your condition

the flok app

Food Science

Community

What People Say

Our History & Team

Founded by the Leaders of a Movement

Led by People Who Understand

Signup

Signup