Dr. Maryam Shanechi. Cred­it: USC Viter­bi

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Is This the Future of Men­tal Health? (USC Viter­bi School of Engi­neer­ing):

“Brain–machine inter­faces (BMIs) pro­vide a direct path­way to the brain to trans­late brain sig­nals into actions … Below, Shanechi (Note: Maryam Shanechi, PhD, assis­tant pro­fes­sor of elec­tri­cal and com­put­er engi­neer­ing) answers some ques­tions about her work and what the future might hold for our under­stand­ing and treat­ment of men­tal dis­or­ders.

What poten­tial does this hold for the future not just of men­tal health, but of under­stand­ing our brains as a whole?

Neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­or­ders are a major cause of dis­abil­i­ty world­wide with depres­sive dis­or­ders being the most dis­abling among them. About 30% of major depres­sion patients are treat­ment-resis­tant – that’s about 5 mil­lion peo­ple in the US alone. Read the rest of this entry »

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When: Novem­ber 15–16th, 2019

Where: Elks Palo Alto, Palo Alto, CA 94306

What: The Trans­for­ma­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Con­fer­ence is an inspir­ing con­fer­ence focused on tech for men­tal health, emo­tion­al well­be­ing, and human flour­ish­ing, at the inter­sec­tion of neu­ro­science, psy­chol­o­gy, tech, entre­pre­neur­ship, and inno­va­tion. It fea­tures expo­nen­tial tech­nolo­gies like AI, AR/VR/XR, net­works and sen­sors, biotech, neu­ro­feed­back, robot­ics and more to build tech to enable human well­be­ing at scale. Read the rest of this entry »

Our newest #NAM­Per­spec­tives paper out­lines the eight key actions need­ed to scale the use of men­tal health tech­nol­o­gy in sup­port­ing men­tal health care pro­fes­sion­als world­wide. Read about this pro­posed path for­ward: https://t.co/vnKAQzrSaS pic.twitter.com/JRd8fKQP80

— Nation­al Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine (@theNAMedicine) Octo­ber 28, 2019

Tech­nol­o­gy has much to offer in terms of pro­vid­ing and improv­ing access to bet­ter men­tal health care. Why, then, has more not been done to take advan­tage of these tools?

The newest dis­cus­sion paper from #NAM­Per­spec­tives, Read the rest of this entry »

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This start­up just raised $8 mil­lion to help busy doc­tors assess the cog­ni­tive health of 50 mil­lion seniors (TechCrunch):

“…star­tups increas­ing­ly rec­og­nize oppor­tu­ni­ties to cater to this aging pop­u­la­tion. Some are devel­op­ing prod­ucts to sell to indi­vid­u­als and their fam­i­ly mem­bers direct­ly; oth­ers are com­ing up with ways to empow­er those who work direct­ly with old­er Amer­i­cans.

BrainCheck, a 20-per­son, Hous­ton-based start­up whose cog­ni­tive health­care prod­uct aims to help physi­cians assess and track the men­tal health of their patients, is among the lat­ter. Investors like what it has put togeth­er, too. Today, the start­up is announc­ing $8 mil­lion in Series A fund­ing co-led by S3 Ven­tures and Ten­sil­i­ty Ven­ture Part­ners. Read the rest of this entry »

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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 »