Ybrain Raises $3.5M To Fund Trials Of Its Wearable For Alzheimer’s Patients

 #GNN Team - Ybrain, a Korean startup that makes wearables for Alzheimer’s patients, announced today that it has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by Stonebridge Capital, bringing its total raised so far to $4.2 million.

Co-founder Seungyeon Kim told TechCrunch that the money will be used for clinical trials and the manufacturing of its wearable devices.

The company was founded in 2013 by Kyongsik Yun, a neuroscientist who trained at the California Institute of Technology, and engineers from Samsung.

Ybrain is currently conducting clinical trials at Samsung Medical Center in Korea.

Kim says that Soterix Medical, another wearable device maker, is Ybrain’s closest direct competitor, while global pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Novartis are indirect competitors. He adds that Ybrain is currently the only company carrying out clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease with a wearable health device.
Ybrain wearable device consists of a headband with two sensors embedded in the front that emit electronic signals at 2-milli-amperes, which stimulate brain activity to counteract the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. The device is supposed to be used for 30 minutes a day, five days a week, and can be worn at home.

The headband is also intended for use by people with “mild cognitive impairment.”

The startup’s clinical trials currently show that its wearable devices are 20 percent to 30 percent more effective than existing oral medication for Alzheimer’s patients. “This was key to our funding,” says Kim.

The devices will be available for purchase online and through hospitals after Ybrain finishes clinical trials and registers with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. as well as the Korean Food and Drug Administration (KFDA).

In a statement, Fortune Sohn, analyst at Stonebridge Capital, said “Most Alzheimer’s disease experts are forecasting that new Alzheimer’s oral medications may not come out until 2025. Ybrain’s global first Alzheimer patient ready wearables will be a great solution.”

[h/t BeTech]

Original Google Glass Chief Gives Us A Clue About Google’s Prime Motivator In Wearable Design

(GNN) - Google X director and former head of Google Glass Babak Parviz was on stage at the Wearables Technology Conference in San Francisco this week, and he shared some interesting details about the project (via CNET), its original and its progress so far. The Glass maker notably wasn’t wearing Glass at the show, and admitted that it wasn’t “necessarily the definitive answer” to the question of what’s next for computing platforms, but that it was “one answer.”

Parviz said that he believes Google has made good progress, and called the current version “a nice first step to where we want to go,” but he also conceded that there’s a long road ahead and that the current form factor needs to evolve to become more comfortable and more power efficient (so it requires less charging time).

Perhaps the most interesting thing that Parviz said was about the origin of Glass – there’s a myth built up and endorsed by Google’s Sergey Brin that Glass was intended to help people disconnect from their smartphone screens and become more engaged in whatever they’re doing at the moment. Brin even once famously said that smartphones “emasculate” their users, a negative outcome Glass was designed to counter.

What the former Glass head said about the impetus behind Glass was that it was about reducing the time it takes to make and receive results from a search query, from about 10 seconds as it stands on a smartphone to far, far less. Putting the input device and means of retrieving and reading the results directly on the head and in front of the eye seemed like the best way to do that.

This motivation makes a lot more sense than some idea about the ‘emasculating’ nature of smartphones, and it likely helps explain design decisions behind Android Wear, and possibly other upcoming Android hardware, too. Think about the always listening Moto X, too, and the introduction in Android KitKat of similar system-wide voice queries for Google search when the display is active.

Google’s end goal is not just to anticipate the next big computing platform, but also to make sure that is search product can thrive and grow on said platform. Through this rubric, it’s easy to see why Glass exists, and why Android Wear was designed the way it was, with voice taking a pretty primary place in the overall interaction experience.

Via 9to5Google