They aim to improve the entire spectrum of care from prevention to screening, diagnosis, treatment, and continuing care.
It has five phases: Technology Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment, and Plateau of Productivity.
There have likewise been soaring valuations for early VC-backed companies and a record number of so-called unicorn companies — those valued at more than $1 billion — in the field.
There is a common disconnect between commercially successful apps and those that have been clinically validated, leaving consumers and clinicians to differentiate which technologies will work and which are merely hype.
This is especially problematic because the field needs decades of sustained growth, investment, and innovation to overcome the current brain health crisis.
Within traditional venture capital models, force-feeding unicorns — stuffing a company with too much money until it chokes — may occur to optimize returns to limited partners, the people who provide capital for venture funds, leading to limited exit options, investors becoming more financially and less mission driven, and high failure rates for other portfolio companies due to insufficient capital and attention from general partners.
Conventional venture capital models may also not have incentives to invest in the longer time horizons essential for neuroscience innovation.
Innovative solutions are needed to mitigate the risk of the brain health technology market failing.
The venture studio model has the unique advantage of “bringing ideas, capital, resources, and talent together — partnering with co-founders to build the best ideas into great companies,” as one company has described it.
Integrated investing models that include venture studio, venture capital, and advisory capabilities may also be extremely valuable for early-stage brain health technology companies.
From an operational perspective, the development of effective brain health executives is an important workforce innovation.
Involving brain health practitioners and researchers in technology companies’ diligence teams can mitigate information asymmetry, such as complex neuroscience principles and black-box algorithms being poorly understood by advisers, employees, and investors without the relevant technical or clinical backgrounds.
Eyre is co-lead of the Neuroscience-inspired Policy Initiative of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the PRODEO Institute and the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, a member of the founding steering committee for Brain Health Nexus of Cohen Veterans Bioscience, and a pro bono strategic advisor board member for the Paris-based HEKA Fund.