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Four StartUp Health Entrepreneurs Tackling Cognitive Health Concerns · StartUp Health NOW Podcast

• 0:00
  [ on-hold music] I have a background largely in Parkinson's.
• 0:09
  That was one of the things that really knocked it out of the park for me, was just seeing how impacted these patients were, and yet it had not been a sort of therapeutic area of focus.
• 0:19
  [ on-hold music] Welcome to Start Up Health NOW, the podcast where we celebrate the entrepreneurs and innovators reimagining the future of health. I'm Logan Plaster.
• 0:31
  This episode is part of our monthly Health Moonshot series. Last month it was all about women's health, and today we're talking about founders and companies rethinking brain health.
• 0:40
  I'm joined once again by my colleague, India Edwards. Hey, India. Hey, Logan. When we talk about brain health, India, there's so much that we could cover. Am I right? You're right.
• 0:49
  [laughs] In fact, there are few areas of health that can't be connected back to the brain. I mean, how we move our bodies impacts our brains.
• 0:57
  Yeah, for years, scientists have referred to this as the brain-body connection. Uh, I read a study that showed that exercise facilitates neuroplasticity.
• 1:06
  In other words, being physically active makes your brain more flexible so you can learn more easily. How we eat impacts brain health.
• 1:13
  I mean, you hear a lot about brain foods, but a 2017 study showed that people with high levels of omega-3s, like what you'd find in salmon, had better thinking ability.
• 1:23
  And even how you feel, your sense of wellbeing impacts your brain. Depression can be an early indicator of Alzheimer's. The list goes on and on and on.
• 1:32
  One thing that seems clear is that the more we understand about the brain, thanks to advances in imaging and biomarkers, the more new, even more fascinating questions arise.
• 1:42
  So today, we're gonna look at this broad landscape through the lens of four entrepreneurs who are creating devices and services to aid the brain, to improve cognition, to identify injury, and improve motor function.
• 1:56
  So first up, let's talk about a company called Virtualeap. India, what's this company all about? So Logan, I'm so excited to talk about Virtualeap.
• 2:05
  To simply put it, their health moonshot is to improve brain health using virtual reality, which is so fascinating.
• 2:11
  When talking with Amir Bozorgzade, the CEO and co-founder of Virtualeap, I told him straight up that I wouldn't automatically think VR, you know, something I've always known to be a fun game, could help improve cognitive function.
• 2:22
  And he said that is such a common misconception that's been thrown around for years. I'll let him explain on how Virtualeap is changing that.
• 2:29
  So to your point about the misconception, I think it's been b- kind of purported by, you know, a conspiracy of, of a lot of hype-oriented journalists and working with, you know, the big manufacturers like Facebook and HTC.
• 2:42
  And, uh, about eight years ago, there was a huge energy towards pushing VR as a gaming platform. And so that conception that you, you're speaking about, it really is a, a contrived one. Um, you know, I, I was a...
• 2:54
  I wrote for VentureBeat myself and TechCrunch, um, so I was paying attention. I was writing a lot of articles and- Right... you know, the applications were always gaming.
• 3:02
  And but that doesn't mean the serious applications for healthcare and education, being the two main categories of critical use cases, aren't, weren't being made, uh, weren't being researched.
• 3:12
  And so there's a really amazing book by Brendan Spiegel at Cedars-Sinai.
• 3:15
  It's called VRX, and he cites 8,000 studies that have been to date worldwide, you know, uh, validating the therapeutic applications of virtual reality for, you know, stroke rehabilitation from, you know, phobia treatments to cognitive behavioral modification.
• 3:30
  And so what we do is in the, in, in our own niche, is the cognitive assessment and training niche of that whole kind of landscape.
• 3:37
  Um, what we've done is we've, uh, gamified neuropsychological assessment tools, very commonly used ones, ones that have been used for decades, into these fun, short, but intense, uh, VR games that are designed to test and train very specific cognitive functions.
• 3:54
  Like, not just the main ones like memory or problem solving or t- or, or your information processing skills, but because it's virtual reality, we also get to test your spatial orientation skills, your motor control skills, your spatial audio awareness, you know?
• 4:07
  Um, this is really unique to virtual reality because it's the first embodied digital format. Absolutely. And when you embody something, you incorporate the body, right?
• 4:16
  And not only are you engaging the human being in that profound way, but you're also tracking it in that unparalleled way. So we're tracking the body movement, the gesticulation.
• 4:26
  With some of our hardware partners, we're tr- uh, also tracking pupil dilation, tracking heart rate, uh, so much data. It's volumetric data sets. We're capturing about like 200,000 data points every three minutes.
• 4:39
  So Logan, like Amir just mentioned, this is such unique technology that they've created.
• 4:43
  You know, I was reading an article published by Scientific American that just in the last year and a half alone, since the onset of COVID, doctors are just now turning to VR as a solution to help with mental health in the aftermath of the pandemic.
• 4:55
  Of course, virtual reality has been around for quite some time, but I found it interesting. The article mentioned that doctors have quietly discovered the surprising health benefits of using VR for mental health.
• 5:05
  But because the brain is such a complicated organ in the body, if not the most complicated, doctors are somewhat hesitant to explore this as a strong solution.
• 5:13
  I mean, I feel like, I mean, there have to be a million uses for this kind of technology. It feels like we're just scratching the surface. Absolutely.
• 5:20
  So Amir and his team have developed a series of daily cognitive workouts of short, intense, fun games that are designed to help test and train your cognitive functions.
• 5:30
  One thing that I mentioned to Amir was that gaming can be addictive, which in my humble opinion, addiction can be very harmful for your brain. So I'm gonna let you listen to his thoughts on that.
• 5:40
  So each game is designed, um, we call them closed loop design games, and that means basically it just levels up or levels down based on the intensity that you can handle, right? And every game is designed like that.
• 5:52
  And so each of the closed loop games should only take about three minutes to playAnd then, it basically you just get a baseline.
• 5:58
  You know, whenever you come as a new user though, you play that first game a little bit longer just because you need to plateau at the level- Right... of your thing.
• 6:05
  But once you plateau, we call that the benchmarking sess- session. Once you've be- benchmarked on one game, it's always about two to three minutes, uh, three, let's just say three minutes, um, each game.
• 6:16
  Um, and the maximum session, uh, per day or per session that you come in would be 15 minutes. Um- Wow. So, so just two to three minutes can help improve the, the cognitive function? Well, let's say three minutes first.
• 6:28
  We can say for sure, because these are g- these are neuropsychological assessment tools that have made been into games, and they're, you know, typically from research or, or commonly used tests already that we translate into VR.
• 6:40
  We don't create these games out of thin air. So they're always based on something, based on research, based on current instruments.
• 6:45
  But we can say on the one hand that three minutes is enough to give you a baseline score that is an, is, is an objective score of how you stand, 'cause the scoring system we've created allows you to know- Right...
• 6:56
  where you stand in that overall objective kind of, you know, landscape, um, uh, uh, of, you know, things that you're really good at and things that you need some, you know, you're a little weak on.
• 7:04
  Like, I'm always weak on spatial orientation types games. I'm very strong on certain memory type games, but very, like maybe m- m- middle average on, uh, problem-solving games.
• 7:14
  You know, and, and then you, you see a capture of yourself, um, as a caricature, but one that pretty much stays consistent over time, and you can try to see how your sleep patterns might affect bad scores in certain areas, but not in other ones.
• 7:26
  You can... It's kind of like a way you see your, your own kind of mental fitness and keep track of it, right? But- Very cool... to say it helps or improves is not something we can say yet.
• 7:37
  The research is so promising in this direction, but we won't know this stuff until, you know... And I'm not talking about we as in just our company.
• 7:44
  There's a whole sector of digital therapeutics that are showing so much promising results, but I can't say as of yet that th- this three minutes has any effect, as of yet.
• 7:53
  Th- that's what the clinical studies that have just begun will have to show- Right... for themselves. Logan, I loved that this is something that Amir and his team thought about when developing Virtual Leap.
• 8:02
  Because truthfully, it was something that immediately came to mind when I was researching their platform.
• 8:07
  You know, I know so many people who play video games all day long, and it negatively affects multiple aspects of their lives. They're glued to the television.
• 8:15
  So it's wonderful that Virtual Leap has found a way around that.
• 8:18
  I have to find it very interesting that you, you made that point because gamification is such a hot topic in healthcare with this idea that if you can just make it into a game, uh, you'll get the patient buy-in that you need.
• 8:29
  But you, you bring up an interesting point about you take that too far and you create, you create this addiction. Absolutely. There's so much more to it. So Virtual Leap also has a mobile app.
• 8:40
  The app is called Enhance, and this is where their library of brain training games live. Amir described to me how the app works for first-time users. Take a listen.
• 8:49
  Basically, as a, as a user, and we're available on all the app stores right now, we have about 23,000 early users who have registered and used it, and you can go and download it even right now.
• 8:58
  And every time you log in as a user, you indicate the number of hours you slept and, uh, your mood from a five-point scale. Okay.
• 9:05
  We're gonna, we're gonna introduce a new feature soon that you can integrate with your smartphone as well, so you can really have- Very cool... a lot more data, raw data.
• 9:12
  But then you, then you play and you click, you know, your daily cognitive workout of today, and you, you click on it, and then you play three random games from the library, which again, like three minutes, three minutes, three minutes, look at some of the reporting, and then you're on your way, uh, back to real life.
• 9:27
  And the idea is to repeatedly come back and keep on playing the whole range of games, not the just the ones you like, but just play the random ones so that you can always evenly distribute your play around all of the games.
• 9:38
  'Cause some games you're gonna like more than others, and you're gonna wanna go and play those games. But we try to make it so that you don't play the games you like. You play all of them equally.
• 9:47
  So last thing I wanted to discuss, Logan, when I was talking with Amir, I mentioned I had read an article that Alzheimer's, one of the most progressive diseases, is costing billions of dollars a year globally, and that number is projected to soar very soon.
• 10:00
  So I wanted to know some of those reoccurring challenges that he sees in trying to address these issues.
• 10:05
  And, uh, he mentioned that as of last year, that number has reached $1 trillion, which I don't know about you, but that blows my mind. I'll let Amir break it down for you.
• 10:15
  So it's actually the figure was 1 trillion as of 2020. Geez. [laughs] And the US, the U- but, but the US accounts for one third of that. It's 305 million last year. My gosh. My gosh.
• 10:25
  And, and, and about two-thirds of that is incurred by out-of-pocket by H- American households. Mm. So it's not even covered. Um, so it's huge.
• 10:32
  It's, it's really scary because there's b- you know, the last 15 years, 99% of Alzheimer's drugs that have been proposed out there into clinical pr- uh, protocols, they've failed.
• 10:42
  And so i- it's hard to get things out there.
• 10:45
  If you get it, you can manage the symptoms with pharmaceuticals, but we don't have any real way to solve it or pr- you know, preemptively avoid it, except this week, in fact, uh, the first, uh, Alzheimer's drug was just approved by Biogen.
• 10:58
  So there is some promise and stuff. Wow. The problem is the, the, the brain blood barrier is a really difficult challenge- Mm-hmm... um, for pharmaceuticals.
• 11:06
  A lot of pharma companies actually start avoiding the category of neuroscience altogether. Um, and some focus on it.
• 11:12
  Maybe it's their, their niche, but a lot of them don't focus on things like the neuroscience issues about c- um, Parkinson's or, or Alzheimer's. [upbeat music] Isn't that crazy? It's crazy.
• 11:26
  I could, I could talk about it all day long, right. Virtual Leap has truly developed some game-changing technology, but I know we've got a few more companies to discuss, so I am very curious to know about Cala Health.
• 11:35
  Logan, what have they built? Ah. So Cala Health is a great example of just how far the brain reaches into our health, like I mentioned at the top of the show.
• 11:45
  Their health moonshot is to, quote, "reimagine electricity as medicine." So what they've done is design a sleek wearable for your wrist that was created to help people suffering from hand tremors called essential tremor.
• 11:59
  Here's Dr.
• 11:59
  Kate Rosenbluth, the founder and chief scientific officer at Cala Health, explaining itUnlike pharmaceuticals, which work by tapping into the chemical or biologic signaling pathways, this therapy works by tapping into the electrical signaling pathways of the body.
• 12:15
  So in the US alone, something like 7 to 10 million people suffer from these tremors, which can make it nearly impossible to do simple daily tasks like eat a bowl of cereal or button up your shirt.
• 12:27
  At a recent Health Transformer showcase at, at StartUp Health, Dr. Rosenbluth broke down their product and platform this way.
• 12:34
  So what I'm gonna do now is walk through a brief introduction to our first product to market, Cala Trio, uh, and the patient-centered care model and integrated digital service model that we, uh, built around that, uh, to really focus on each individual patient and meeting their needs.
• 12:50
  So we start with, uh, informing patients about their hand tremors. About seven million Americans live with these hand tremors.
• 12:57
  They make everyday tasks like eating soup with a spoon, you know, signing a check, as you can see here, drinking a cup of coffee, spreading cream cheese, uh, you know, using computers and phones, turns those tasks into a real challenge.
• 13:11
  So patients speak with their doctors, uh, who fax their prescription directly to Cala. And from there, uh, we actually drop ship, uh, each patient's therapy directly to their doorstep.
• 13:22
  We help them learn how to use the new therapy.
• 13:24
  And of note, we also leverage the same connected digital infrastructure for running clinical studies, which is a really unique platform for building, uh, scaled real world evidence, uh, on our therapy.
• 13:35
  So to use the device, uh, patients wear the device on their wrist. Um, motion sensors on board the device calibrate the therapy, uh, for each patient's tremor. So it measures the, the parameters of their tremor.
• 13:48
  Um, and s- the, the stimulation on the wrist actually sends a signal to the brain.
• 13:52
  It sends it s- to, to the same location in the brain where deep brain stimulators are surgically implanted for the treatment of essential tremor. That last bit that Dr. Rosenbluth mentioned is critically important.
• 14:04
  She alluded to the fact that prior to the invention of this non-invasive device, a common treatment for tremors would've involved actual brain surgery in order to deliver deep brain stimulation.
• 14:15
  I mean, with all the risks that go along with brain surgery. She elaborated on those gaps in the standard of care and how they inspired her later in the conversation. I had actually been working in, uh, uh, neurosurgery.
• 14:26
  I'd done a f- a post-doctoral fellowship, uh, at, at UCSF in neurosurgery, mostly in the space of deep brain stimulation, gene therapy.
• 14:33
  Uh, and one of the things that, you know, really stood out to me about that, uh, c- clinical immersion period, as I was mentioning, was really getting to know essential tremor patients, uh, realizing several things.
• 14:44
  Number one is exactly as, as the question is pointing to, there's very little... There, there needed, there needs to be better therapeutic options for these patients.
• 14:51
  They basically are presented the choice of either you can get brain surgery or, um, you can take medications. The me- no medication has ever been brought to market specifically for treating essential tremor.
• 15:02
  So the first line therapies are propranolol, a beta blocker, more commonly thought of, um, as a drug for reducing blood pressure, uh, and primidone, which is an anti-seizure medication. That's what really...
• 15:12
  You know, I have, I have a background largely in Parkinson's.
• 15:15
  That was one of the things that really knocked it out of the park for me, was just seeing, you know, how impacted these patients were, and yet it had not been a sort of therapeutic, uh, area of focus.
• 15:25
  So we, we were, uh, passionate about introducing better therapeutic options for them.
• 15:30
  So now instead of brain surgery, you're talking about an easy to wear and clinically validated device that you can actually get a prescription for.
• 15:38
  What's also interesting about the Trio is that the same mechanism that measures tremor strength in order to calibrate the device is also able to track progress in a very scientifically valid way.
• 15:49
  So patients can literally see on a graph how much their tremor has decreased after using the device.
• 15:55
  What's also worth noting is that because they're rooted in scientific research, it looks like essential tremors are just the beginning. Here's Rosenbluth again. Cala takes a science first approach, uh, to innovation.
• 16:06
  Um, we always have. I'm a neuroscientist and engineer by training.
• 16:10
  And that includes, you know, investing in academic collaborations to really build deep mechanistic understanding of, uh, the b- the bioelectronic mechanisms behind this work, uh, in essential tremor, as well as our broader pipeline of other indications.
• 16:24
  Some two billion people live with chronic diseases that can be targeted by the peripheral nervous system.
• 16:30
  So if Rosenbluth and her team can discover new ways to use non-invasive electrical stimulation, I mean, there's really no telling how many people they can help. Absolutely. That is, that is fascinating.
• 16:41
  So people with ET can actually avoid brain surgery and, you know, the, this solution can replace it. Awesome. Yeah.
• 16:51
  I- if you can, if you can just wear a simple wearable instead of getting surgery, I think you'd go for it. [laughs] Well, next on my list is Ingram Health. They are a recent addition to StartUp Health.
• 17:02
  They joined just two months ago, and they have created something very cool. They are on a mission to alleviate cognitive decline in seniors and diagnose it earlier using augmented reality.
• 17:11
  So sort of similar to Virtual Leap, which I talked about earlier. Marwin, Ingram's CEO and co-founder, recently joined us at our June Health Transformer showcase to talk about what they have created.
• 17:21
  But first, I want you to hear Mar's background and what led him to create Ingram Health. Basically, all my career has been in healthcare.
• 17:27
  I find that to just be a really, uh, kind of meaningful place to work, where there's very interesting kind of business models in the sense that the people kind of receiving the services are not the ones paying for them, uh, which we, you know, we all know.
• 17:41
  But that creates a lot of really interesting kind of incentives and dynamics that, that sort of shape behavior.
• 17:47
  Uh, and so after kind of working at the advisory board for a number of years, went to Columbia Business School, where, um, I met my co-founder. He was actually in a different Columbia, uh, grad program.
• 18:00
  Uh, and really focused on kind of taking advantage of the different healthcare resources there. Uh, worked at a number of different startups, 'cause I was very kind of interested in that space.
• 18:10
  Um, so worked at, uh, CareDocs, which actually I think is an early StartUp Health company, although I guess they changed their name now. So worked there for a little bit.
• 18:19
  Um, did some work with Noom, uh, which also kind of in the digital health space, and just found that space really, uh, interesting.And then ca- uh, I guess in between, you know, I had pursued a, a few different kind of startup ideas 'cause that was an area I was really interested in, things around kind of voice user interfaces and a lot of these kinda like next generation, uh, ways that people are interacting with technology, uh, and came across some of the, like, immersive technologies that were coming out.
• 18:49
  So I took a class on, uh, virtual reality and augmented reality. We got all, like, Google Cardboards. Uh, and that...
• 18:58
  It's not, like, the greatest VR headset, but it is a pr- you know, there's some experiences in there where I was like, "Man, I'm for- forgetting for a second that I'm standing, like, holding my phone in front of my face in my living room, feel like I'm in, like, a forest and one of those, you know, robotic dogs is, like, running at me, and I'm feeling really terrified."
• 19:18
  Uh, or they have these kinda like... There's a lot of, like, Pixar style movies in there that really gave me, like, a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. And so really kinda started thinking about how these
• 19:33
  synthetic environments can be created that can really have a significant impact on someone's mood, uh, and started thinking about different ways to kind of apply that in a healthcare setting.
• 19:45
  So as you mentioned, these immersive environments that can be created can have a tremendous impact on someone's mood.
• 19:51
  And after a bunch of research and teaming up with his co-founder at Columbia, they created Ingram Health, a platform that provides easy-to-use, data-driven digital experiences based on proven principles of music and pet- We're building an easy-to-use platform to reliably enhance mood, to reduce difficult-to-manage behaviors, and to improve care planning.
• 20:11
  Here's how it works. People access our web app directly from their phones with no download.
• 20:16
  The experiences make use of phone and tablet-based augmented reality and combine calming music with animals, trees, waterfalls, and other elements from nature that move along with the music and play an animated scene out right in your own room.
• 20:31
  These experiences are designed to put seniors in a good mood and to reduce anxiety.
• 20:37
  When we looked at what was being done to help seniors that are suffering from cognitive decline and a lack of engagement, we were amazed at how well-researched and effective some non-drug techniques could be.
• 20:49
  If there was a drug that had the effects of a consistent dose of music therapy, people would be hailing it as a real breakthrough, but these approaches are often not delivered in a data-driven way, and they're really challenging to do remotely at scale.
• 21:03
  By delivering content that's based on these proven techniques and combining it with phone-based augmented reality, we're able to address some of these limitations and create experiences that are guaranteed to put a smile on the faces of our users.
• 21:17
  You know, one thing I love about this is how they are bridging really old school, low tech, lo-fi therapies like [laughs] music therapy and pet therapy with the latest in augmented r- au- augmented reality and cell phones and cameras.
• 21:33
  I mean, they're really bringing these two worlds together in an interesting way. Right? It's, it's absolutely incredible. And according to Maur, they've seen some amazing results.
• 21:41
  When we isolate to the effect of the augmented reality specifically, we've been able to show statistically significant improvements in the three quality of life metrics we're tracking.
• 21:51
  In particular, we're seeing reductions in anxiety and agitation, improvements in alertness, and boosted mood in the seniors and also often in caregivers. So that last bit was fundamental.
• 22:04
  These non-pharma therapies like pet therapy and music therapy seem so straightforward, yet they have proven to help people suffering from anxiety, social isolation, or dementia.
• 22:13
  Maur's team at Ingram has taken this gap in healthcare and opened up a sea of possibilities with this unique approach of combining augmented reality and music therapy to boost someone's mood, and that is game changing.
• 22:24
  The other thing I love about this is that he and his co-founder are just getting started. I mean, they just really came out of school with this passion. They started their business recently.
• 22:35
  They're already seeing some traction, and it feels like the world's their oyster. Like, they, they are just getting rolling and so passionate about this space. Absolutely.
• 22:47
  [gentle music] So the last founder we're gonna meet on this episode is Mark Covchia from RC21X.
• 22:55
  On a recent showcase, Mark, who is the CEO and co-founder of this Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based startup, set the stage for his company this way.
• 23:03
  If you think about your la- last doctor's visit, you probably had to get on a scale, and, uh, th- they measured your weight. They probably checked your blood pressure.
• 23:11
  You probably did a little bit of blood work before you went in to see the doctor.
• 23:14
  But I don't know about yourself, but I, I know that my doctor never really asked me how my brain's been since my last checkup, and, uh, that's something that, that we believe should change. So what, you might ask.
• 23:26
  Why is it important that we're not getting regular brain assessments?
• 23:30
  Mark and his team have really honed in on the economic costs of this at a workforce level, and he puts that cost in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
• 23:39
  So you're, you're looking at lost productivity, uh, just in the United States alone that exceeds a trillion dollars a year.
• 23:45
  Um, those are just based on the four major areas that, that can impact performance: illness, injuries, stress, and fatigue.
• 23:52
  So India, the idea goes like this: If American businesses lose a trillion dollars a year due to injury, illness, stress, and fatigue, what portion of that can be tied back to brain health?
• 24:03
  And if so, how can we use regular brain assessments to catch problems early and keep people healthy? RC21X does this through a mobile platform where they've turned brain assessments into games.
• 24:15
  Because it's a self-assessment, users can do it regularly and get that coveted trend line of health instead of just getting one moment of data when they visit their doctor.
• 24:25
  The self-assessment app is called Roberto, named after baseball player Roberto Clemente, whose foundation played a part in funding the company's research and development.
• 24:34
  Here's Mark again talking about the appSo the actual self-assessment tool itself is called the Roberto app. It's available on the iOS, Google Play, and Amazon app stores. Takes about six minutes to complete each session.
• 24:47
  We're creating that longitudinal performance data, and again, we're lo- looking to get to the masses, so it's not something that you have to buy any special hardware. Most people have a smartphone.
• 24:57
  Um, we're enabling regular ch- checkpoints and, and, and, uh, touch, touch points and check-ins.
• 25:02
  Uh, there's an early warning system, so if we notice something, we can push that alert, again, to you, your supervisor, your caregiver.
• 25:08
  And really what we've seen with people that are using our tool is behavior modification, an improvement in mindfulness, and I'll talk about predictive modeling here in another slide or two.
• 25:17
  To get a bit more into the economics of how an app like Roberto helps companies, here's Mark explaining two recent case studies.
• 25:24
  The first was with the NFL, where they developed a predictive model in order to know who needed to receive brain imaging. One of the things we did early on is we de- developed a predictive model.
• 25:35
  Uh, and this, this was with the, uh, the law firms working, uh, in the NFL concussion settlement.
• 25:40
  They were ordering these expensive two-day, three-day battery, uh, batteries of tests, and the problem was that only 28% of the population, uh, was gonna qualify for a settlement, given that NFL settlement, uh, that, that was agreed to a few years ago.
• 25:53
  So they were looking for a faster, better, cheaper way to identify who's most likely gonna qualify, because as I mentioned, only 28% of those players were gonna qualify, but they were spending a lot of money on 100% of the players to try and identify who's most likely gonna qualify.
• 26:07
  And we ended up working with six different firms across the country, and we saved them a little over $3 million, uh, during that engagement. Um, we also have an, an example in a, in a high-risk workplace environment.
• 26:17
  Uh, we had a voluntary program that was put in, incorporated with their safety program. Uh, this company wanted to reduce, reduce accidents and injuries down to zero.
• 26:26
  Within that first 12 months of working with them, we had almost 80% participation, uh, and they had a significant drop both in claims as well as lost time, uh, off due to accidents and injuries.
• 26:37
  Obviously, from these case studies, it's clear that the applications for a technology like this are very broad, from concussion assessments in the NFL to workplace safety at a marine towing company in Illinois.
• 26:50
  One thing I love about RC21X and this Roberto app is just how scalable it is. The current standard of care for brain health assessments using a neurologist leaves giant gaps in care.
• 27:01
  There's a serious undersupply of physicians, uh, neurologists in the world. Imagine living in a rural part of the United States or a lower resourced country. Uh, forget seeing a neurologist regularly.
• 27:12
  But an app that takes six minutes to assess your brain health, that's something that almost everyone can access.
• 27:18
  Mark and his team are focused on employers right now because that's where the economic argument is the clearest, but I'm seeing this kind of technology making its way to consumers.
• 27:26
  I mean, I wouldn't mind a regular check-in myself. So India, uh, four amazing founders, four great companies in brain health. You know, what are your top takeaways from VirtuLeap and Ingram?
• 27:37
  So one thing for certain is that there is so much potential in improving how we treat and care for the brain.
• 27:42
  However, it's gonna require game changers, risk takers, health transformers like Mark, like Amir, Kate, and like Maior to make stuff happen, to create these innovative solutions.
• 27:53
  You know, obviously, where we are today is a tremendous leap in the right direction.
• 27:56
  But in order to unlock the mysteries of the brain and speed up the discovery of treatments for brain health, we've got to master the mechanisms of the brain in ways that will create new opportunities for health.
• 28:05
  And it's, it's really comforting that we have people in our own portfolio, the entrepreneurs that we've discussed today, who are working to do that. What about you?
• 28:13
  I'm struck by how untapped the brain still feels in terms of impacting whole body health. Mm. I think of Cala Health and their approach to electricity as medicine and what they can do with brain stimulation.
• 28:26
  I mean, it feels like it's just scratching the surface. It's gonna be really exciting to see how they apply this technology in the future.
• 28:33
  And with RC21X, I think there's untold downstream benefits to putting an easy brain assessment tool into everyone's hands. I mean, I love that we could simply and cheaply start getting longitudinal data on our brains.
• 28:47
  That's gonna be critical as our population ages and we see a rise in cases of dementia and Alzheimer's. I mean, the sooner we catch these diseases, the better. Absolutely.
• 28:56
  [gentle music] That's the time we have for this week, India. Uh, thanks for joining me. Thanks for, you know, explaining to me about these two founders that you talked to. Absolutely. Thanks again, Logan.
• 29:06
  I'm, I'm already looking forward to our next chat. Everyone, join us next week for more inspiring stories from healthcare's most innovative entrepreneurs.
• 29:14
  And next month, India and I will be back with a special episode on mental health and happiness. See you then. [upbeat music] Thanks for listening to StartUp Health NOW.
• 29:28
  StartUp Health invests in health transformers from around the world who are committed to achieving audacious health moonshots.
• 29:34
  If you wanna learn how you can join this community of entrepreneurs, or if you wanna connect with one of our 350 companies, go to startuphealth.com.
• 29:42
  If you'd like to learn how you can invest in our Health Moonshot Rolling Fund in collaboration with AngelList, go to healthmoonshots.com. Thanks for listening to StartUp Health NOW. We'll be back next week.
• 29:52
  [upbeat music]