Coming soon: Assessing your mental health while you talk on a phone, type on a keyboard, or scroll through a website

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Tech Watch­es You for Dig­i­tal Symp­toms of Brain Dis­or­ders (IEEE Spectrum):

The med­ical pro­fes­sion­als tasked with car­ing for our minds don’t have an easy job. To diag­nose peo­ple with neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­eases, doc­tors can per­form brain scans, but such scans are expen­sive and the results are some­times inscrutable. The oth­er options include con­duct­ing time-­con­sum­ing cog­ni­tive tests, or rely­ing on doc­tors’ own sub­jec­tive analyses.

See­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty, a num­ber of star­tups have devised quan­ti­ta­tive meth­ods to diag­nose dis­eases or assess men­tal health while patients com­plete rou­tine activ­i­ties, like talk­ing on a smart­phone, typ­ing on a key­board, or scrolling through a web­site. Here are three com­pa­nies that say they can lift the “fin­ger­prints” of men­tal dis­or­ders from people’s mun­dane behaviors.

Con­tin­ue read­ing arti­cle to get a good update on Mind­strong Health, Neu­raMetrix and Win­terLight Labs.

News in Context:

• Mind­strong Health iden­ti­fies dig­i­tal bio­mark­ers of cog­ni­tive func­tion using smart­phone data
• Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright
• Pear Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es $50M to devel­op and mar­ket a port­fo­lio of dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics for men­tal health
• Mind­strong Health rais­es $14 mil­lion to mod­ern­ize the diag­no­sis and treat­ment of neu­ropsy­chi­atric disorders
• Pend­ing FDA review and approval, research find­ings pave way for Akili’s EVO to become first brain train­ing plat­form pre­scribed for ADHD
• Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy can improve our lives…if we first address these Pri­va­cy and Informed Con­sent issues

Overview of the brain & mental health innovation landscape:

• Upcom­ing event: 2018 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Decem­ber 4–6th, 2018)
• Pre­sen­ta­tions by Mind­strong Health, Savonix, HealthTech Con­nex and Neu­raMetrix at the 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Brain Health & Enhance­ment in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 5–7th, 2017):