MedRhythms secured $25 million in Series B funding to advance its digital remedy platform aimed toward measuring and bettering somebody’s potential to stroll after they’ve skilled a neurologic harm or illness.
Morningside Ventures and Advantage Capital co-led the spherical, with participation from present investor Werth Family Investment Associates, to provide the Portland, Maine-based firm $31 million in funding to this point.
Company co-founder and CEO Brian Harris was a neurologic music fellow at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, treating individuals with stroke and mind deficits with music. He started getting questions from sufferers and households on how they may entry comparable care exterior of the hospital. Not seeing an appropriate various, he began MedRhythms with entrepreneur Owen McCarthy in 2016.
The firm’s platform makes use of sensors, music and software program, together with an evidence-based intervention referred to as “rhythmic auditory stimulation,” to focus on the neural circuitry that controls motion. The expertise faucets into “entrainment,” a neurologic course of during which the auditory and motor techniques of the mind are coupled in synchrony with an exterior rhythmic cue, which over time, can result in improved strolling functionalities.
“There is no other stimulus that engages the brain like music does,” Harris mentioned. “When someone is engaging in music, it aids in neuroplasticity to create new connections and strengthen old ones. Neuroplasticity is how we can learn new things or why people with brain deficits can improve.”
MedRhythms’ product cycle. Image Credits: MedRhythms
A 12 months in the past, MedRhythms’ digital therapeutic product acquired Breakthrough Device designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to deal with persistent strolling deficits ensuing from a stroke. It is the primary within the firm’s pipeline, which can also be taking a look at utilizing music to deal with neurological situations like Parkinson’s, acute stroke and a number of sclerosis. To that impact, it’s taking part in a neuroimaging research with Massachusetts General Hospital.
Harris intends to make use of the proceeds from the Series B funding to get the product to market, increase the workforce and the remedy pipeline. The firm is getting ready for submission to the FDA so it may well do a industrial launch of the expertise and start scientific trials.
Stephen Bruso, funding accomplice at Morningside, mentioned he has identified the workforce at MedRhythms for a 12 months. The agency is energetic within the digital well being area and has adopted the corporate carefully since then.
COVID served to essentially shift healthcare in how one can ship care. The hospital and clinic fashions had been sturdy, however resistant to alter till the pandemic pressured care to telemedicine visits at residence, he mentioned. It additionally pressured innovation on the business, and at-home remedy is an space the place Bruso expects to see enchancment in each affected person compliance and restoration, and MedRhythms is capitalizing on that development of shifting care to the house.
What intrigued the agency for the final couple of months was the concept of affecting the mind by way of non-pharmaceutical wants.
“MedRhythms using musical intervention to drive changes and improvements in neurologics is compelling,” Bruso added. “Emotional memory is tied to music. Its use provides a richer experience than taking a drug, and the company exists to tap into that.”
