AI-enabled chatbot Wysa receives FDA Breakthrough Device designation for patients with chronic pain, depression and anxiety

AI Behav­ior Health Chat­bot App Fast-Tracked by FDA (Psy­chol­o­gy Today): Recent­ly the U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) grant­ed break­through device des­ig­na­tion to Wysa’s AI-based dig­i­tal men­tal health con­ver­sa­tion­al agent that deliv­ers cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) via a smart­phone to adults suf­fer­ing from depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and chron­ic mus­cu­loskele­tal pain

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Welcome to the Ultimate Neuroscience Lab: Your Smartphone

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time six sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try resources plus a fun illu­sion. #1. Top 10 Men­tal Health Inno­va­tions to Watch: Spe­cial SciAm/ WEF report Hop­ing you enjoy the great series over at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can and espe­cial­ly #7, titled Wel­come to the Ulti­mate Neu­ro­science Lab: Your Smartphone,…

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Mindstrong Health raises $100M to transform how we measure and promote mental health

Mind­strong scores $100M to mon­i­tor well­ness via smart­phone behav­iors (Mobi­Health News): This morn­ing dig­i­tal men­tal health plat­form Mind­strong scored a whop­ping $100 mil­lion in Series C fund­ing. While Mind­strong has a his­to­ry of sol­id fund­ing rounds, this amount will more than dou­ble its total fund­ing. In 2017 it got its first $14 mil­lion cash infusion.…

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Portable brain assessment device by Headsafe secures 510(k) FDA clearance

__ FDA Clears Nurocheck, Portable Device to Quick­ly Assess Brain Health (MS News Today): “A portable device that can quick­ly mea­sure elec­tri­cal activ­i­ty in the brain and relay it to doc­tors via a smart­phone app, called the Nurochek sys­tem, has been cleared by the Unit­ed States Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) for use as a medical…

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Verily and LivaNova accelerate efforts to detect and treat depression

__ Heads-up about a cou­ple fas­ci­nat­ing devel­op­ments over the last few weeks. 1) Verily’s Bold New Project Aims to Pre­dict Depres­sion Using Your Phone (Sin­gu­lar­i­ty­Hub): “Depres­sion is a shift­ing, amor­phous beast that silent­ly haunts mil­lions. It’s also dif­fi­cult to pin­point. Psy­chi­a­try has for­mu­lat­ed well-test­ed ques­tion­naires to diag­nose depres­sion. But these tests require patients to reach out…

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Startup Aural Analytics raises $4.3M to monitor neurological health by analyzing speech patterns

Aur­al Ana­lyt­ics rais­es $4.3M for voice-based cog­ni­tive health mon­i­tor­ing (Mobi­Health­News): “Aur­al Ana­lyt­ics, a start­up using speech ana­lyt­ics algo­rithms to gauge changes in brain health, has raised $4.3 mil­lion in seed fund­ing … The arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence engine col­lects speech sam­ples through a smart­phone or tablet app, and uploads these to a cloud serv­er for analy­sis. From these, 

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