Boston - July 6, 2021 - Linus Health, a digital health company focused on improving brain health, today announced a $55 million Series B funded completely by existing investors. The funds will enable Linus Health to grow its team and accelerate development of its platform to address the urgent need for cognitive screenings and insights as the prevalence of dementia continues to grow to more than 1 million diagnoses per year in the U.S. alone. Linus’s platform offers an accessible, noninvasive, and time-efficient method to assess cognitive health, including pre-symptomatic detection of cognitive impairment, which optimizes interventional outcomes and advances research capabilities.
The funding news follows a string of groundbreaking studies that validate the efficacy of the Linus platform in detecting cognitive diseases. Researchers have used the Linus platform and assessments, such as the DCTclock™ digital clock-drawing test, to identify the beginnings of Alzheimer’s disease pathology in their studies. Most recently, Linus’s platform was proven highly effective in detecting signs of early Alzheimer’s disease in a study from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and is expanding those understandings through a much larger study conducted by the Global Alzheimer’s Platform Foundation® (GAP), among others.
"The entire Linus Health team and its investors feel an incredible amount of responsibility to develop and perfect the rapid early detection of subtle changes that can presage cognitive decline,” said David Bates, Linus Health CEO. “Linus’s multimodal digital tools are designed to be easily scalable and accessible, lowering the cost of care dramatically while detecting symptoms earlier than traditional testing, and at the most ideal time for intervention. Early detection is the first step in addressing cognitive decline, and Linus Health is providing the foundation to deliver screening and specialist insights into primary care globally."
A 2020 study found that the economic burden of Alzheimer’s disease treatment in the US is estimated at $305 billion, and expected to grow to more than $1.5 trillion as the population ages. Given the staggering cost of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, today’s funding news comes at a crucial time for Linus Health and brain health as a whole, as early diagnosis and intervention can lead to better outcomes and lower costs for patients, caregivers, and healthcare systems.
“Rapid, cost-efficient testing for neurocognitive disorders is missing from our current healthcare system, and Linus Health is uniquely suited to become the de facto cognitive disease testing platform for the world,” said Dr. Gerald Chan, Chairman of Linus Health’s board. “Our team is committed to addressing cognitive health across the globe, and this investment is an accelerant to advancing the treatment of Alzheimer’s and other cognitive disorders.”
Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Linus Health’s co-founder, and a behavioral neurologist, neuroscientist, and Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School sees an exciting future for the company: “We have aggressive goals for Linus in the next three years to address the threat that dementia poses to the aging population, and today’s funding news is an important piece to accelerating our timeline.”
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Linus Health is a Boston-based, digital brain health company that combines industry-leading technology, AI and social engagement tools to improve brain and mental health outcomes. Led by an interdisciplinary group of experienced entrepreneurs, clinicians, scientists and engineers, the company deploys technologies to promote overall health and mental acuity. Linus’s multimodal, smartphone- or tablet-based brain health solution collects objective data from multiple digital measures of cognitive and motor function (“digital biomarkers”) and translates this data into actionable insights. The solution allows care professionals to monitor brain health remotely, easily and conveniently over extended periods of time, even outside of clinical settings. Linus collects, aggregates and analyzes information drawn from data points like voice and speech patterns, visuospatial memory, dual-tasking ability and fine motor control, as well as movement, balance, and pulmonary capacity and can link with electronic health records to provide a comprehensive picture of individuals’ brain health. Learn more at linus.health.