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

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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.
YK: We looked across the landscape, and we realized that most cognitive assessment is [handled by] a subspecialty of clinical psychology called neuropsychology, where patients are given a series a tests and each is designed to probe a different type of brain function — memory, visual attention, reasoning, executive function.
We created a tech solution that provides clinical decision support to physicians so they can manage patients’ cognitive health.
TC: How does your product work, and how is it administered?
YK: Not quizzes and not subjective questions like, ‘How do you think you’re doing?’ but rather objective tasks, like connect the dots, and which way is the center arrow pointing — all while measuring speed and accuracy.
TC: How much does it cost these doctors’ offices, and how are you getting word out?
YZ: We sell a monthly subscription to doctors and it’s a tiered pricing model as measured by volume.
Medicare created a new code to compensate doctors for cognitive care planning though it was rarely used because the requirements and knowledge involved was so complicated.
TC: Say one of these assessments enables a non specialist to determine that someone is losing memory or can’t think as sharply.
YZ: There’s phrase: “Diagnose and adios.” Unfortunately, a lot of doctors used to see their jobs as being done once an assessment was made.
It’s hard because it requires a lot of one-on-one work, so we created a tech solution that uses the output of tests to provide clinical support to physicians so they can manage patients’ cognitive health.
TC: Meaning you suggest an action plan for the doctors to pass along to their patients based on these assessments?
A lot of the time, a doctor — and family members — don’t know how impaired a patient is.

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