PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - Jun 15, 2017) - Mindstrong Health, a startup transforming the diagnosis and treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders through the power of AI and ubiquitous mobile technology, today announced that it has secured a $14 million round of Series-A funding. Led by Foresite Capital and ARCH Venture Partners, the round included participation from Optum Ventures, Berggruen Holdings and the One Mind Brain Health Impact Fund. The investment will be used to build Mindstrong's elite technology and clinical operations team to support large-scale research and development.
"All modern medicine is based on objective measurement, yet tracking mental health has been limited to subjective reports in a clinical environment," said Dr. Paul Dagum, founder and CEO of Mindstrong Health. "To improve outcomes for people with mental disorders, we need the kind of objective measures we have for other chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Mindstrong's technology delivers continuous, objective measures of behavior and cognition at a level of resolution and insight that has never been possible."
Established in 2014, Mindstrong is redefining how behavior is measured through its patented breakthrough science that transforms the patterns of interaction on a smartphone into objective measures of brain function. Based on four years of intensive clinical research, the platform delivers real-time, continuous digital biomarkers of mood and cognition, including measures of processing speed, attention, memory and executive function.
"What excites me about Mindstrong is the transformation of an individual's patterns of typing or scrolling on a smartphone into precise measures of cognitive function," said Dr. Tom Insel, co-founder and President of Mindstrong Health. "This new, powerful approach to assessment serves as the foundation for developing better interventions to improve mental health care. Mental disorders are global health problems. With smartphones we have a potential global solution."
In the coming months, Mindstrong Health will share additional information regarding its clinical trial outcomes and its vision for how the process of delivering mental health care will be fundamentally transformed.
"Mindstrong Health's founding team brings unmatched understanding of the critical challenges surrounding the way in which the medical community cares for patients suffering from cognitive health disorders," said Jim Tananbaum, CEO and Managing Director, Foresite Capital. "By fusing together Paul, Rick, and Tom's collective experience, leadership, and technical vision, those concerned with improving patient outcomes will gain an innovative platform that modernizes and vastly improves the way in which care is provided."
For more information, visit: www.mindstronghealth.com
About Mindstrong Health
Based in Palo Alto, California, Mindstrong's patented science and technology was developed by Dr. Dagum, and is based on four years of extensive clinical studies applying machine intelligence to human-computer interactions patterns. Mindstrong products are in clinical trials in numerous partnership projects with payers, providers, academics and the pharmaceutical industry to bring these new tools to bear on answering the most fundamental questions in behavioral health. Its Board of Directors includes Richard Klausner, MD, Jim Tananbaum, MD, Robert Epstein, MD, Thomas Insel, MD, and Paul Dagum, MD PhD.