Four ‘moonshot’ health tech startups aiding cognition and brain health (podcast)

July 1, 2021 | by

This 30 minute podcast interviews four tech entrepreneurs in the StartUp Health Health Transformers accelerator/funding ‘moonshot’ program. Their focus is on technologies designed to improve brain health and address issues around cognitive impairment and disease.

  • Amir Bozorgzadeh, CEO & Co-founder of Virtuleap, a Lisbon-based company that uses VR and gamification in the Enhance VR brain training app for a daily cognitive workout of short, intense, and fun games
  • Kate Rosenbluth, PhD, Chief Science Officer & Founder at Cala Health, Cala Trio is a wrist-worn stimulator that reduces hand tremor for people with essential tremor (ET). Up until this therapeutic device, the only option for ET was a stimulator inserted in a key portion of the brain. 
  • Maor Cohen, CEO & Co-founder of n*gram health, uses immersive digital experiences and augmented reality delivered via smartphone and tablet for assessment, evaluation, and improvement in older adults with cognitive impairment.
  • Mark Cavicchia, RC21X co-founder. RC21X has developed two brain and human performance assessment tools, Roberto and RC21X. These provide brain performance trend data that can be used in healthcare, for monitoring treatment and recovery plan effectiveness, as well as industrial safety.

All these businesses are well along in proven technology and funding, a trend we’ve been finding with accelerators that once specialized in startups barely out of seed and still proving their models. Cala Health, for example, we noted in 2016 with its $18 million raise, but has been around since 2013. RC21X, once Home Base, also has been around since 2013.

The podcast is hosted by India Edwards and Logan Plaster. Mr. Plaster, StartUpHealth’s media director, and this Editor worked together on an article about the late Viterion Digital Health in his previous venture with Telemedicine Magazine. 

Mo’ money! Over $600 million in funding washes into digital health

March 8, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Looney-Tunes-Were-in-the-Money.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]The unicorns may be getting gored, the bloom off the rose in health tech funding, and it’s a ‘hangover’ from 2015, but both January and February wound up being strong months for digital health funding, with over $600 million to companies in various stages. Mobihealthnews racks up the wins, leading with MindMaze (recovery for stroke patients) $100 million in February, Pear Therapeutics (digital tools + pharmaceuticals) with $20 million and Cala Health (hand/wrist tremor treatment) with $18 million. In remote patient monitoring, Vivify Health raised $17 million completing a 2014 round for $23 million and interestingly will use some of this funding to develop an IVR (interactive voice response) solution (Mobihealthnews 25 Feb). They don’t total in insurer Oscar which had a massive raise of $400 million bringing their funding over $765 million, not that far from Unicorn Territory–probably a good idea as they have some dizzying goals like 1 million members in five years from its current 145,000 members in New York and New Jersey, adding Texas and California. The caution on Oscar is that they are heavily dependent on narrow networks and exchange business that may be unsustainable. But if you sign up, you get a Misfit Flash tracker and access to their mobile app! Digital health funding in February reached $197 million (Mobihealthnews)