_______________

Bay­er inks deals with eleven star­tups under G4A Dig­i­tal Health Part­ner­ships pro­gram (press release):

“Bay­er announced today that the com­pa­ny has signed col­lab­o­ra­tion agree­ments with eleven dig­i­tal health star­tups. As part of the pro­gram, Bay­er will sup­port these start­up com­pa­nies aim­ing for longer-term col­lab­o­ra­tions to dri­ve for­ward the devel­op­ment of spe­cif­ic dig­i­tal solu­tions to improve patients’ health Read the rest of this entry »

__________

Sleep Ther­a­py for the Mass­es May Be Com­ing to You Soon (The New York Times):

“CVS Health wants to help mil­lions of Amer­i­can work­ers improve their sleep. So for the first time, the big phar­ma­cy ben­e­fits man­ag­er is offer­ing a pure­ly dig­i­tal ther­a­py as a pos­si­ble employ­ee ben­e­fit.

The com­pa­ny is encour­ag­ing employ­ers to cov­er the costs for their work­ers to use Read the rest of this entry »

_______________

Time for Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing the lat­est research, tools and think­ing for life­long brain health and men­tal well-being — and a cou­ple fun brain teasers 🙂

New brain research:

• Can trained old­er brains out­per­form untrained younger ones at demand­ing cog­ni­tive tasks? Quick answer: YES
• Sep­tem­ber 17th @ UC Berke­ley: Dis­rupt­ing neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases

New neurotech and digital health:

• Har­ness­ing inno­v­a­tive neu­rotech­nolo­gies to pro­vide bet­ter urgent care at Ban­ner Health
• Phar­ma indus­try warm­ing up to dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics
• Dig­i­tal Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (CBTi) may become the uni­ver­sal first-line treat­ment for insom­nia

New thinking on brain and mind:

• Pos­i­tive soli­tude, Feel­ing active and Future-mind­ednes: Three Keys to Well-being
• Study finds psy­chi­atric diag­noses to be ‘sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly mean­ing­less’

And a couple fun brain teasers:

• Quick brain teas­er to deter­mine your stress lev­els
• Test your cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty

Have a great month of Sep­tem­ber,

The Sharp­Brains Team

– Som­ryst app by Pear Ther­a­peu­tics

Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics have poten­tial but com­mer­cial suc­cess unproven (Van­tage):

“Devel­op­ing drugs to treat dis­or­ders of the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem is famous­ly fraught with dif­fi­cul­ty. Sev­er­al com­pa­nies, includ­ing Pear Ther­a­peu­tics and Dthera, are tak­ing a wild­ly dif­fer­ent approach: dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics. These are pieces of soft­ware designed to treat dis­ease that are reg­u­lat­ed, pre­scribed and even paid for as if they were drugs … Pear is so far the only com­pa­ny to have brought a dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic to mar­ket – but it is by no means the only com­pa­ny in this space. Akili Inter­ac­tive has­filed for FDA approval of AKL-T01, a com­put­er game designed to treat ADHD, and Read the rest of this entry »

__________

Pear Ther­a­peu­tics’ dig­i­tal insom­nia ther­a­peu­tic will put FDA’s Pre­Cert frame­work through its paces (Mobi­Health­News):

“Pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics com­pa­ny Pear Ther­a­peu­tics announced late last week that it has filed an FDA mar­ket­ing autho­riza­tion for Som­ryst, its dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py for the treat­ment of adults with chron­ic insom­nia and depres­sion.

While an approval from the agency would mark the third autho­rized pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic for Pear Read the rest of this entry »