Today, there are digital therapies for nearly every health goal. There are sleep apps to keep track of our REM cycles, meditation apps to calm us down, step-counting apps to let us know when we’ve hit our recommended 10,000 steps a day, and diet apps to help us count calories.
But what if one’s goal is to keep memory intact? This requires first assessing current memory health followed by a multi-pronged program including diet, exercise, sleep, stress-reduction, cognitive training, smoking cessation, and so much more that it might seem that the apps needed to achieve such a goal would not even fit on the screen of your phone.
Well, no. Neurotrack’s unique Memory Health Program combines all of these prongs into a single digital therapy that is poised to change the way we deal with the aging brain: treating it before its nosedive into cognitive decline instead of after. And now today, together with Japanese insurance company SOMPO, Neurotrack is about to put this digital therapy to the test at a crucial juncture in Japan’s aging population.
In 2012, the number of Alzheimer’s patients in Japan reached 8.6 million. By 2025, that number is expected to rise to 13 million, putting undue strain on both families and the country’s already depleted population of professional caregivers. SOMPO, whose rallying cry is, “Safety, security, health,” recently signed a 16-week Proof of Concept deal with Neurotrack to co-develop and hone this new digital therapy, providing weekly lessons and strategies for lifestyle changes which have been proven, through thirty years of neuroscience research, to preserve cognitive health and forestall its decline.
“I could not be more thrilled to collaborate with SOMPO during this critical moment of inflection in Japan, when we have, on the one hand, a burgeoning problem of cognitive decline and, on the other, the digital tools we need to address it,’” said Elli Kaplan, CEO of Neurotrack, whose personal experience with the ravages of dementia has been Neurotrack’s rocket fuel and raison d’être from the start. “What will be really exciting, over the course of our 16-week trial with SOMPO, is the chance to really roll up our sleeves, put our digital therapeutics program to work, and watch how it changes the game as people are given the opportunity to improve their cognition today while reducing their risk for Alzheimer’s tomorrow.”