Toronto, March 01, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cambridge Brain Sciences (CBS) announced today that it has closed a new round of expansion capital from Canadian Shield Capital, a Toronto-based private equity investment firm, closely aligned to Hatch, a global engineering consultancy.
This institutional financing round will allow CBS to further seize upon the secular trend in digital health, especially mental health, and the need for accurate and reliable quantified measures of brain function and brain health as provided by the CBS platform. The funds will allow CBS (i) to grow its sales and customer support teams rapidly to further accelerate the adoption of its flagship product, CBS Health, and ii) to expand upon CBS Health features, solidify its position as a leading cognitive care platform for healthcare professionals treating the growing mental health, brain injury and ageing patient populations.
The COVID-19 global pandemic has forced healthcare practitioners to adopt validated platforms such as CBS Health to manage patients remotely. There has been an exponential growth in patients seeking treatment for mental health conditions brought on, or exacerbated by, the pandemic, as well as individuals recovering from COVID-19 suffering with longer term neurological symptoms often termed COVID long-haulers.
CBS Health, the flagship product, is a simple and easy-to-use web-based platform (or integration) that allows healthcare professionals to administer the CBS tasks standalone or alongside other established and validated complementary assessments (such as the PHQ-9, a standard scale for assessing the severity of depressive symptoms). Assessments can be combined into a single session and administered in person or remotely via email—an option from which clinicians have benefitted greatly throughout the COVID-19 global pandemic.
The investment also contemplates further collaboration between CBS and Hatch, building upon an earlier successful pilot for a dedicated CBS platform to address corporate workplace mental health and safety at large scale industrial operations, construction sites and infrastructure projects.
“CBS is excited to be closing this round of financing which builds upon a long-term relationship with Canadian Shield and an earlier successful pilot with Hatch,” said Marc Lipton, President and CEO of Cambridge Brain Sciences Inc. Marc added “the funding will allow us to further accelerate the growth of our core CBS Health product especially amongst mental health practitioners, as well as strategically explore, with Hatch, large corporate applications for workplace mental health and safety.”
“CBS brings many years of academic discipline and rigorous digital measurement of cognitive health, with applications in mental health, brain injury recovery, healthy aging, and soon workplace safety. The growing awareness of, and attention to, mental health conditions and CBS’ engaging and efficient approach gives it enormous runway,” adds Andrew W. Dunn, Managing Partner at Canadian Shield Capital.
James Marzocca, Global Managing Director, Project Delivery at Hatch, remarked, “Mental health and safety are central themes for Hatch, for our clients and our people. We see great potential to apply CBS testing as a non-invasive diagnostic to assess fitness for duty for individuals reporting to worksites where mental alertness is essential for their own safety and the safety of others.”
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About Cambridge Brain Sciences
Cambridge Brain Sciences is a leading online brain health assessment platform that accurately quantifies brain function and brain health. Our assessments have been taken millions of times and used in over 300 studies published in leading academic journals over the last 30 years. Owing to its years of rigorous academic development, CBS possesses one of the world’s largest normative databases on cognitive function developed from a database of 10 million+ cognitive task scores. Our proprietary assessments are used by healthcare practitioners treating mental health conditions, brain injuries and ageing patient populations throughout the world, as well as by leading academics and research institutions. The tasks were developed by Professor Adrian Owen, the Chief Scientific Officer at CBS. Professor Owen is the head of the Owen Lab at the Brain and Mind Institute, a cutting-edge cognitive neurosciences research center at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.
About Canadian Shield Capital
Canadian Shield Capital is a long-term private equity and growth capital investor focused on identifying and leveraging major demographic, social, and macroeconomic trends. Partnering with great management teams, who possess strong and stable business models, they work with management to build those business sustainably through thoughtful analysis, planning, and execution. Canadian Shield Capital supports their partners with capital and expertise to build networks, improve processes, implement new technologies, refinance, and adapt to changing market dynamics, leveraging their close relationship with Hatch wherever possible.
About Hatch
Hatch is a global multidisciplinary management, engineering, and development consultancy.
Whatever our clients envision, our engineers can design and build. With over six decades of business and technical experience in the mining, energy, and infrastructure sectors, we know your business and understand that your challenges are changing rapidly. We respond quickly with solutions that are smarter, more efficient and innovative. We draw upon our 9,000 staff with experience in over 150 countries to challenge the status quo and create positive change for our clients, our employees, and the communities we serve.