Thomas Insel

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

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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. That was fol­lowed by a $15 mil­lion Series B fund­ing round in June of 2018, which got a $31 mil­lion add-on in Jan­u­ary of 2019, bring­ing the company’s total fund­ing to just under $60 mil­lion before this news.

The com­pa­ny was first found­ed in 2014, but it made a splash in 2017 when for­mer NIMH direc­tor Dr. Thomas Insel left his posi­tion at Ver­i­ly to take on the role as pres­i­dent at Mind­strong. Insel is still involved in the com­pa­ny today in an advi­so­ry role…The tech­nol­o­gy also has a dig­i­tal bio­mark­er com­po­nent. This can track a patient’s smart­phone behav­iors. While the start­up will not see what a patient is doing on their phone, it can mon­i­tor how a patient taps, scrolls and types. It can look for indi­ca­tors of stress, depres­sion or oth­er men­tal health factors.

[Read more…] about Mind­strong Health rais­es $100M to trans­form how we mea­sure and pro­mote men­tal health

Google gets serious about brain & mental health innovation and hires NIMH Director Tom Insel

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thomas-insel

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NIH Director’s State­ment Regard­ing Dr. Thomas Insel’s Depar­ture:

“After serv­ing 13 years as Direc­tor for the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health (NIMH), Thomas R. Insel, M.D., will step down effec­tive Novem­ber 1, 2015…he is def­i­nite­ly not retir­ing. He is plan­ning to join the Google Life Sci­ences [Read more…] about Google gets seri­ous about brain & men­tal health inno­va­tion and hires NIMH Direc­tor Tom Insel

A Call to Action: Improv­ing brain & men­tal health via dig­i­tal plat­forms, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity research and the White House BRAIN initiative

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Ses­sion held at the 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, fea­tur­ing:

  • Dr. Thomas Insel, Direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health (NIMH)
  • Dr. Adam Gaz­za­ley, Direc­tor of UCSF Neu­ro­science Imag­ing Cen­ter and Co-founder of Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs
  • Dr. Daphne Bave­lier, Head of the Brain & Learn­ing Lab at the Uni­ver­sity of Gene­va & U. of Rochester
  • Jack Young, Head of Qual­comm Life Fund
  • Chair: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO of SharpBrains

–> Click HERE to watch all sessions

New Summit Speakers: Thomas Insel (NIMH), Catherine Madison (CPMC), Rajiv Pant (NYT), and Mark Baxter (Rosetta Stone)

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We are proud to announce four excel­lent addi­tions to the quite stel­lar Speak­er ros­ter at the upcom­ing 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Octo­ber 28–30th):

  • Dr. Thomas Insel, Direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tute for Men­tal Health, will share his vision for a bet­ter brain health &  men­tal health sys­tem, and issue a call to action and inno­va­tion to get there
  • Dr. Cather­ine Madi­son, Direc­tor of the new Ray Dol­by Brain Health Cen­ter, will dis­cuss how front-line pro­fes­sion­als can improve stan­dards of cog­ni­tive care today
  • Rajiv Pant, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer at The New York Times, will chair a fas­ci­nat­ing ses­sion on how to scale up med­i­ta­tion and mind­ful­ness via well­ness pro­grams and biofeed­back sensors
  • Mark Bax­ter, Head of Prod­uct (Fit­Brains) at Roset­ta Stone, will show how big data and videogames can help detect sub­tle changes in cog­ni­tion and per­son­al­ize cog­ni­tive stimulation

2014_SharpBrains_Virtual_Summit_Shaping the Practice and the Future of Brain Fitness—> Learn more about the 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit (Octo­ber 28–30th). You can reg­is­ter with a 10% dis­count using pro­mo­tional code: sharp2014. Please join us!

Dr. Thomas Insel, NIMH Director, to speak @ 2014 SharpBrains Virtual Summit

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Tom InselWe are proud to share that Dr. Thomas Insel, Direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health and neu­rotech­nol­o­gy vision­ary, will open the 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit on Tues­day, Octo­ber 28th.

Pri­or to this appoint­ment at NIMH, Dr. Insel was Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try at Emory Uni­ver­sity, where he was found­ing direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Behav­ioral Neu­ro­science. He has pub­lished over 250 sci­en­tific arti­cles and four books, served on numer­ous aca­d­e­mic, sci­en­tific, and pro­fes­sional com­mit­tees and boards, and is a recip­i­ent of sev­eral awards, includ­ing the Out­stand­ing Ser­vice Award from the U.S. Pub­lic Health Ser­vice. Dr. Insel grad­u­ated from the com­bined B.A.-M.D. pro­gram at Boston Uni­ver­sity, did his intern­ship at Berk­shire Med­ical Cen­ter, Mass­a­chu­setts, and his res­i­dency at the Lan­g­ley Porter Neu­ropsy­chi­atric Insti­tute at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, San Francisco.

–> Explore the Agen­da at 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, and con­sid­er join­ing us Octo­ber 28–30th!

Good profile of pioneer Dr. Thomas Insel, NIMH Director

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ThomasInselBlaz­ing Trails in Brain Sci­ence (The New York Times):

“The pen­du­lum has swung so far toward drug ther­a­py in recent years that it is hard to recap­ture how dis­rup­tive those 1980 stud­ies were. Dr. Insel’s work and that of many oth­ers, test­ing the effect of new med­ica­tions, would turn the field away from long-term talk­ing cures and increas­ing­ly toward med­ica­tion and short-term behav­ior ther­a­pies root­ed in the same kind of ran­dom­ized, con­trolled tri­als con­duct­ed in oth­er fields of medicine…Yet the over­all impact of this drug rev­o­lu­tion on pub­lic health has been mixed…”

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