BrainCheck – Empowering physicians to deliver high-quality and personalized cognitive health solutions through its comprehensive platform

Cognitive brain health refers to brain functions such as attention, learning, memory, language, and executive function. This includes higher-order functions like decision-making, goal-setting, planning, and judgment. Cognitive reserve is an important part of keeping the brain healthy. Think of this as the brain's ability to improvise and find alternate ways of getting a job done. For decades, doctors and scientists have relied on pencil-and-paper tests to measure brain health. But modern technology enables us to bring these tests into the 21st century and offer people everywhere easy, affordable access to their brain health from wherever they are.

BrainCheck is one such company that helps reduce the human and economic toll of cognitive impairment and dementia through its interactive cognitive assessment and cognitive care planning technology. Hundreds of hospitals and clinical practices use the BrainCheck platform to help thousands of patients live better and safer lives at home, decrease caregiver frustration, and save the health system. With its easy-to-use interactive tests, users can track their brain health on an iPad, iPhone, or browser and receive results on the spot, both compared to their baseline and the population average. The company tests multiple cognitive domains in less than 10 minutes. Results can be shared (in a HIPAA-compliant manner) among a person's care team — individuals, family members, caregivers, and clinicians.

Cutting-edge Cognitive Assessment and Testing Platform Offered

BrainCheck™ Outcome Screener: The company's custom, general-purpose screening tool, the BrainCheck™ Outcome Screener, can give providers an initial overview of their patients' levels of cognitive function, call attention to potential concerns, and reveal how impairment differs depending on the individual. The platform includes digital versions of many commonly used subjective screeners for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia. These include the St. Louis University Mental Status (SLUMS) exam and the Short IQCODE. A comprehensive care planning protocol facilitates data input and streamlines workflows, making it easy for patients, caregivers, and providers.

Advanced Digital Cognitive Assessment: The BrainCheck platform helps providers quickly and accurately assess cognitive function when screening tools indicate possible cognitive concerns or when patients have subjective memory complaints. With standard and customizable cognitive assessment batteries, support for multiple languages, and remote testing capabilities, the BrainCheck platform can help providers increase access to important cognitive care. The Immediate and Delayed Recognition tests assess patients' ability to recognize items that previously appeared immediately after being prompted and after a time delay. These tests predominantly determine function in the temporal lobe and the frontal, parietal, and occipital lobes. BrainCheck uses two well-established tests to assess executive function. The Digit-Symbol Substitution test measures processing speed and accuracy, and the Stroop Color and Word test measure the reaction time required to overcome cognitive interference. These tests assess function primarily in the frontal lobe and the parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes. Providers can choose which assessments and screening tools to include and the order in which to administer them.

BrainCheck CQ™: BrainCheck gives providers an objective measure of their patients' cognitive health. Clinically validated in a number of studies, its algorithms instantly provide scores for overall and domain-level performance. And the detailed clinical reports offer additional insight to providers, supporting their diagnostic decisions. The BrainCheck CQ™ composite score provides a comprehensive view of patients' cognitive health using a patented algorithm based on its extensive research into each assessment. Using scaled and weighted assessment scores, BrainCheck CQ™ scores range from 0 to 200. ​ In addition to the composite score, the platform offers insight from individual scores for each assessment, mapping specific cognitive impairments to areas where patients are likely to struggle with activities of daily living.​

Cognitive Care Planning: Cognitive care planning and care management are new, recommended services developed in partnership with the Alzheimer's Association and CMS. These services enable caregivers to normalize to a particular deficit level and focus on areas where patients need support, prolonging independence. The BrainCheck platform's cognitive care management tools streamline data collection to help providers deliver personalized interventions that can preserve daily living activities and decrease frustration for patients and caregivers. Cognitive care planning–specific screening tools built into the BrainCheck platform help patients and providers determine specific cognitive and behavioral concerns, as well as areas of difficulty in patients' daily lives.

The Visionary Leader Upfront

Yael Katz, Ph.D., co-founder, serves as the Chief Executive Officer of BrainCheck. She is a Northwestern and Princeton-trained neuroscientist with a strong analytics background. Ms. Katz brings proven scientific and business leadership to BrainCheck, raising $12 million in venture capital, overseeing the development and commercialization of the company's cognitive assessment and care platform, and cultivating a top-notch team with offices in Houston and Austin.

"Our goal is to help people of all ages understand what's happening in their brain while improving concussion and dementia care along the way."