BrainCheck Secures $8M Series A Funding to Advance Personalized Care for Alzheimer's Patients

On October 12, 2019, VCBeat (WeChat: vcbeat) learned from foreign media that the U.S. health diagnostics platform BrainCheck had completed an $8 million Series A financing round. The round was led by Tensility Venture Partners and S3 Ventures, with participation from Nueterra Capital and True Wealth Ventures.

It is reported that BrainCheck previously completed seed funding rounds of $3 million and $1.5 million in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

BrainCheck is a platform dedicated to assessing brain health. It overcomes the limitations of traditional paper-and-pencil tests by employing non-invasive technology for cognitive assessment. This technology stems from 20 years of research conducted by the Perception and Action Laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine (now Stanford University), under the leadership of the company’s founder, David Eagleman.

BrainCheck offers interactive assessments accessible via iPhone, iPad, and PC, enabling users to obtain insights into their cognitive health within just ten minutes. The platform presents a series of cognitive tasks requiring judgment and selection, with the resulting score reflecting the individual’s current cognitive level.

The platform primarily offers two types of cognitive assessments: a memory assessment and a motor function assessment. It enables data-driven detection of various brain conditions, ranging from Alzheimer’s disease to concussions. Currently, the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) notes in its guidelines for evaluating mild cognitive impairment (MCI) that BrainCheck can be used to directly assess MCI.

BrainCheck not only helps users understand their mental state but also assists physicians in rapidly and accurately assessing patients’ cognitive levels, serving as a clinical decision-support tool.

Currently, there are only 12,000 neurologists in the United States, while the elderly population requiring treatment reaches as high as 50 million. Therefore, BrainCheck is focusing on patients with Alzheimer’s disease, aiming to improve patient experience through its personalized algorithms.

Dr. Yael Katz, CEO and Co-Founder of BrainCheck, stated, “Cognitive care should be an end-to-end solution that enables earlier assessment of issues and allows results to be shared between physicians and patients. By analyzing multimodal data, BrainCheck empowers physicians to create and adjust personalized interventions, thereby helping to improve patients’ current conditions and formulate next-step treatment plans.”

Tensility Venture Partners, founded in 2016 and headquartered in Chicago, primarily invests in AI startups. The firm focuses on four key areas for the optimal application of intelligent software: enterprise operations, healthcare, sales and marketing, and cybersecurity.

S3 Ventures, established in 2005, is a venture capital firm based in Texas, USA. It primarily invests in information technology and medical device companies, manages $450 million in assets, and maintains a particular focus on enterprises in Texas and the southwestern United States.

True Wealth Ventures, established in 2015, is a venture capital fund founded by Sara Brand and Kerry Rupp that focuses on investing in women-led companies in the consumer health sector. Although women-founded companies deliver superior market returns, they remain underrepresented in venture capital. True Wealth Ventures is one of the few U.S. venture capital firms led by female investors.