From Scientific Learning to Dakim

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Two inter­est­ing com­pa­ny press releas­es, one yes­ter­day one today, show­ing how cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions may be help­ful no mat­ter our age, from kids to seniors, as long as we under­stand what those “tools” are sup­posed to do and don’t expect, or are promised, miracles:

Dakim® , Inc. Secures $10.6 Mil­lion Series C Fund­ing Led by Galen Partners

- “an inno­va­tor in brain fit­ness tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions, today announced the com­ple­tion of a $10.6 mil­lion Series C financ­ing. The round was led by Galen Part­ners, a lead­ing pri­vate equi­ty firm spe­cial­iz­ing in health­care investing…Mr. Jahns said, “Dakim has devel­oped an inno­v­a­tive, afford­able and prac­ti­cal solu­tion to assist the rapid­ly aging pop­u­la­tion main­tain their brain health and fight Alzheimer’s dis­ease.”

Com­ment: fas­ci­nat­ing to see such a large round-which makes sense giv­en demo­graph­ic trends in this emerg­ing field. But, still, it is a sig­nif­i­cant bet. Hope­ful­ly part of those resources will be devot­ed to research behind the spe­cif­ic impact of the Dakim cog­ni­tive intervention.

Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing Reports 2007 Results

- “a lead­ing provider of brain fit­ness solu­tions for the edu­ca­tion market…Revenue for the year totaled $46.1 mil­lion, an increase of 12% com­pared to $41.0 mil­lion for the year end­ed Decem­ber 31, 2006.” and “We expand­ed our address­able mar­ket through the acqui­si­tion of the Read­ing Assis­tant which moves us clos­er to the main­stream market.”

Com­ment: a very inter­est­ing trade-off here. On the one hand, Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing has great research and clin­i­cal evi­dence for spe­cif­ic groups of kids with spe­cif­ic pri­or­i­ties. Kids with audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing as main bot­tle­neck may see clear improve­ments after their inten­sive inter­ven­tion. Oth­er kids may also ben­e­fit, but unclear at what point lies the bal­ance between clin­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and the time & invest­ment required. Com­pa­nies obvi­ous­ly want to grow and increase “address­able mar­kets”. The ques­tion is, how can schools best make the deci­sion about what kids may ben­e­fit the most? or ben­e­fit “enough”?

For more infor­ma­tion, you may enjoy our Mar­ket Report:

“This 87-page report is the first to define the brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket, sum­ma­rize the sci­ence behind brain plas­tic­i­ty and cog­ni­tive train­ing, and ana­lyze the size and trends of its four cus­tomer seg­ments: con­sumers, health­care & insur­ance providers, K12 school sys­tems, and For­tune 1000 com­pa­nies, mil­i­tary, and sports teams.”