European tech initiative zooms in on digital biomarkers and mental health

EIT Health focus­ing on dig­i­tal bio­mark­ers and men­tal & brain health (Health Europa): “Announc­ing the sec­ond year of their inno­va­tion pro­gramme, Wild Card, EIT Health, a net­work of best-in-class inno­va­tors backed by the EU, are look­ing to chal­lenge tal­ent to deliv­er real solu­tions to the health­care mar­ket. This year, Wild Card will focus on two chal­lenges: mental…

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New $30M venture philanthropy fund aims at revolutionizing the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease

_____ Why diag­nos­ing Alzheimer’s today is so difficult—and how we can do bet­ter (Bill Gates): “Alzheimer’s research is a fron­tier where we can dra­mat­i­cal­ly improve human life—both the lives of peo­ple who have the dis­ease and their loved ones. I’m opti­mistic that we can sub­stan­tial­ly alter the course of Alzheimer’s if we make progress in several…

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Tara Thiagarajan, Founder of Brainnovations Winner Sapien Labs, on building a global platform for brain research that truly captures the diversity of humanity

___ What sur­prised you the most from the Judges’ ques­tions and feed­back dur­ing the Brain­no­va­tions Pitch Con­test? I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to see the sig­nif­i­cant range and depth of knowl­edge shown by the judg­ing pan­el, lead­ing to very spe­cif­ic and use­ful ques­tions around the key chal­lenges to build our glob­al research plat­form. In a nutshell,…

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Jan Samzelius, CEO of Brainnovations Winner NeuraMetrix, encourages pioneers to focus on “simple, elegant solutions to big problems”

What sur­prised you the most from the Judges’ ques­tions and feed­back dur­ing the Brain­no­va­tions Pitch Con­test last month? Even with only a brief pre­sen­ta­tion the judges imme­di­ate­ly got the poten­tial impact of our tech­nol­o­gy to mea­sure and mon­i­tor brain health and began to think about oth­er appli­ca­tions for us – sev­er­al we had not thought about. That…

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Akili raises an additional $11.9M; brings Amgen, Merck, Pfizer and Shire to the digital medicine table

—– Akili Adds Amgen Ven­tures and M Ven­tures* to Series B Financ­ing, Increas­ing Round to $42.4 Mil­lion (press release): “Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs, Inc. (“Akili”), a dig­i­tal med­i­cine com­pa­ny devel­op­ing nov­el, non-phar­­ma­­co­log­i­­cal ther­a­peu­tics and diag­nos­tics for cog­ni­tive dis­or­ders, today announced an $11.9 mil­lion expan­sion of its recent Series B financing. 

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