PRC was founded in 1966 by Edwin Prentke and Barry Romich as a spin-off of a federally funded medical engineering research program. The research was happening at Case Institute of Technology and Highland View Hospital. Case is now part of Case Western Reserve University where Barry was then an engineering student and HVH was the county rehabilitation hospital where Ed worked as an engineer.)

Today PRC assistive technology products and services focus on the communication needs of people with significant speech disability. PRC products offer synthetic and/or digitized speech, together with a variety of means of making selections and other outputs. A significant component of PRC products is the proprietary Minspeak language representation method. Communication speed using Minspeak has been demonstrated to be two to four times as fast as spelling and word prediction.

PRC representation outside North America is through the PRC wholly-owned subsidiary Prentke Romich International in the UK. PRI represents PRC throughout the UK and Ireland and maintains relationships with distributors in about 25 countries. PRI has a wholly-owned subsidiary, Prentke Romich Deutschland, which distributes throughout Germany.

On August 12, 2004, the announcement was made that PRC had begun the process of business ownership succession to an ESOP, Employee Stock Ownership Plan. That process was completed and the company is 100% owned by an ESOP trust.

Enter the PRC-Saltillo site

Learn about the PRC ESOP

Return to Barry Romich

Return to Romich Foundation