Neuroglee raised US$10 million for its remote care management platform for patients with mild cognitive impairment.Photo Credit: Nerve Gurley
At Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Aniket Singh Rajput has been working on algorithms for the management of patients with neurodegenerative diseases. Throughout his research, he has seen how many patients, family members, and caregivers are affected by Alzheimer’s and dementia, while few approved treatments are available.
Seeing the urgent need for more complementary therapies, he resigned from his doctorate last year and founded Neuroglee. This digital health startup recently completed a $10 million round of financing, and plans to use the funds to establish a remote care platform and digital treatment for mild cognitive impairment.
Openspace Ventures and EDBI led the A round of financing. There is also a family relationship: his brother Kuldeep Singh Rajput (Kuldeep Singh Rajput) is the founder of Biofouris, a medical technology company backed by SoftBank. He is an angel investor in this startup, and Is the chairman of the company’s board of directors. Openspace and EDBI are also investors in Biofouris.
In an interview with Zoom, Kuldeep Singh Rajput said: “I shared some of the experiences, some mistakes and some lessons we have gained at Biofouris, so that they will not repeat the same mistakes and help them expand their business scale.”
There is also some overlap between these two businesses. Biofouris has been working on digital treatments in cardiology and oncology, while Neuroglee is taking a similar approach to neurology.
First, Neuroglee will cooperate with Mayo Clinic to jointly develop a virtual care platform based on Mayo Clinic’s current mild cognitive impairment project. This condition is characterized by loss of memory or cognitive abilities, and sometimes develops into dementia.
The Mayo Clinic program called HABIT (Health Action for Independence and Thinking) is usually run in person for 10 days. But after that time, it is the patient’s responsibility to adhere to these interventions.
“When they went home, the nurse team and clinical team were following up by phone. When the patient returned to the clinic, six to nine months had passed,” Aniket Singh Rajput said. “What happened during that time is unknown.”
His start-up company is developing a version of the HABIT program that patients can do at home with the support of health navigators and clinical care teams.
The startup is also developing a digital therapy with different games, tasks, educational modules and reminiscence therapy to show people different images or videos that they can remember. It plans to use different indicators to track users’ progress, including the time required to complete tasks, how quickly they tap their phones, and facial expressions captured by smartphone cameras.
The start-up company plans to complete a proof-of-concept study in Singapore by the end of the year and plans to seek a breakthrough designation from the Food and Drug Administration.
