NeuroTech Pathways

NeuroTech Pathways is committed to seeing the best mental health solutions become available to children worldwide. We recognize new neuro-technology solutions don’t naturally fit into today’s healthcare ecosystems; making market entry difficult for individual companies. Our team of healthcare advisors, consultants and volunteers provide services that accelerate market adoption.

Children’s mental healthcare is in crisis. Worldwide suicide rates are at an all-time high and childhood mental illnesses such as sleep loss, hair plucking, and self-inflicted injury is commonplace.   The current gold-standards of care, psychotherapy and pharmaceuticals, require significant training and expense, causing inaccessibility in many parts of the world. Where they can be accessed, often experts disagree on the diagnoses and treatment plans.

Fortunately, the ability to accurately diagnose and treat conditions via brain pathologies and training is rapidly progressing thanks to advancements in sensors, big data, and neurobiology. These "neuro-technology" solutions promise a consistency and scale never before possible. However, their market adoption faces grave challenges because they don’t fit naturally into existing mental healthcare ecosystems.

NeuroTech Pathways is being formed by three mom engineers committed to accelerating the adoption of brain pathology-based mental health solutions for children. Our founding team originally met over two decades ago while bringing innovative medical devices to market for Hewlett-Packard Medical Products. Since then we have continued to acquire diverse healthcare experiences enabling us to understand the need for, as well as the challenges in, neuro-technology based solutions available to children worldwide.

Our business model is to create a professional services company that builds and accesses a dedicated community of thought leaders and contributors who want better mental health solutions for children. We will engage this community as advisers, consultants, and volunteers; they will help us learn, network and advocate for change. We will leverage this community to enable emerging neuro-technology companies to 1) understand market challenges, 2) create plans to overcome them and 3) get their solutions to market.

We plan to pilot our business initially in the United States and then expand worldwide through a systematic roll-out plan based on our client and market needs.

The number of children struggling with mental illness worldwide is staggering. Fortunately, new neuro-technology solutions to diagnose and treat mental illnesses are emerging.  These solutions are proving effective in delivering sustained benefits without harmful side effects.   However, they often involve diagnostic and device based therapies that don't naturally fit into the current mental healthcare model, a model largely designed around psychotherapy and pharmaceuticals.  As such, despite clear promise, neuro-technologies typically struggle to obtain sufficient clinical validation, find acceptable payer models and build market awareness; preventing children worldwide from realizing their benefits.

In speaking with our broad healthcare network we learned that like us, many have personal experiences making them passionate about better mental healthcare solutions for children.  To date over 90% of those we reached out to in our network agreed to become advisers, consultants or volunteers.  This commitment from our initial community alone makes us immediately valuable to emerging neuro-technology companies wishing to accelerate their market adoption. In our initial conversations with neuro-technology innovators and investors we received confirmation that they see clear value in our planned offering as a faster, more cost-effective alternative to building it themselves.

Our solution benefits:

1. Millions of children from around the world who will gain access to better mental healthcare solutions. 
2. Those who want to contribute to ensuring children have better mental health solutions; especially in regions of the world where conventional approaches are inaccessable.    
3. Hundreds of emerging technologists who want to successfully develop and deploy new neuro-technology solutions. 

We provide these benefits through leveraging our expert community that enables neuro-technology companies to successfully get products to market.

Within the next six months get commitment from six industry thought leaders and a team of at least 200 volunteers and consultants. - Assemble an initial team of influential advisers, consultants and volunteers

Within the next year obtained three signed contracts. - Obtain three engagements with neuro-technology companies to accelerate their solution adoption.

Obtain consent to publish a case study with one of the initial clients during the second year. - Build evidence our business model is working.

NeuroTech Pathways is the first to combine technology specific professional services with a community of passionate experts built on a crowdsourcing platform. This combination enables delivery of fast, cost effective services to our neuro-technology clients, enabling much greater success than if they pursued these capabilities independently.  To build this platform we will leverage existing crowdsourcing technologies and customize them to meet our specific needs.  

Unfortunately most of today’s mental healthcare approaches require highly trained specialist, making comprehensive care inaccessible to many.  Neuro-technology solutions promise a scale and consistency never before possible.  For example, as EEG diagnostic tools continue to evolve with machine learning, they will achieve diagnostic capabilities that can reduce the need for highly trained specialist.  As brain training treatments evolve they will serve as alternatives to expensive pharmaceuticals and professional therapy. However this broader accessibility first requires achieving business success with the technologies available today.  

Market entry of medical innovations is exceptionally difficult; many good technologies fail due to this.  This is why a company like NeuroTech Pathways, who builds communities to facilitate market success of neuro-technology solutions, is needed.  We will deploy our solution through using our networks and community to find companies who benefit from our services. Our services will be more affordable since neuro-technology companies can quickly access a comprehensive set of providers, insurers, investors, parents, school administrators.  Then this same group can be accessed again by our next client with very little overhead. 

During the next three months our founding team plans to continue to invest in our company by foregoing their salaries.  We will use this time to continue to build our networks and database infrastructure as well as market our capabilities to potential clients.  Thereafter we plan to solicit paying clients, while still advancing our infrastructure build.

By year two our plan is to have a minimum of six active clients whose consulting fees will pay for the efforts of the founding team as well as the additional part-time consulting staff we will utilize from our network.

We will attract top-notch advisers through compensating them with earned equity for their years of service.  In addition performance bonuses will be made available. 

In year three we will begin to reinvest corporate profits in worldwide expansion, focusing first on regions where our team has expertise or are best to support our client portfolio.  

Our main goals is to accelerate the adoption of brain-pathology based mental health solutions for children.  Key factors that threaten to limit our success include:  

1) Our ability to form a sizable active community.

2) Our ability to influence reimbursement from payers 

3) The ability of our community to advocate and create change.

4) The identification of clients to serve who are ready to address the market.

Our plan is to address these key risks early to prove our business model.  

http://www.neurotechpathways.com

Our healthcare experience makes us well aware that promoting the adoption of new technological approaches in the mental health ecosystem is a huge challenge.  We are committed to meeting this challenge because we are passionate about its importance to children.  Selection by MIT Solve improves our ability to meet this challenge because:  

1) Enhances our credibility as a serious resource 

2) Provides access to strong candidates for our Advisory Board 

3) Enables us to reach clientele that can benefit from our services.  

We've seen an encouraging willingness to participate from our personal and professional networks.  This includes a vast array of parents as well as leaders and graduates from our former positions and schools.  We will engage these individuals formally as volunteers, consultants and advisers in the upcoming phase of our venture.  

Our most direct competitors are general healthcare consulting firms.