CogniFit: Improving human cognitive health
A technology enthusiast with a vivid vision of new digital tools that can revolutionize healthcare, Carlos has 25+ years of experience building organizations and digital product innovation. He is an engineer, a passionate entrepreneur, and the CEO of CogniFit. He has spent over 10 years building AI-powered digital solutions to help take care of the human brain.
Conception of CogniFit
The lack of a simple, reliable, and accessible tool to talk to the human brain was one of the major reasons behind founding CogniFit. “We all have a brain. But before CogniFit, most people didn’t have cognitive health check-ups until it was too late. And if their cognitive abilities were declining faster than expected, there was little guidance or tools to take care of it.”
CogniFit was created to solve this problem on a global scale. The company’s mission is to improve people’s quality of life, as they create the most advanced digital health solutions to assess and maintain brain health and treat cognitive disorders.
Digitizing healthcare
Identifying patients’ needs and leveraging proven digital health solutions to cope with insufficient healthcare access (i.e., for the elderly, remote populations, and those with chronic illness) is only worsened by the lack of healthcare professionals in most countries.
“Expanding services into Homecare, through digital and telehealth, is a way to alleviate pressure upon the healthcare system. It´s a highly growing market as the need is more urgent during and after pandemics.”
“Reimbursement codes for Telehealth and telemedicine will boost the demand for these services. Telehealth utility, benefits, and need awareness have dramatically increased because of the pandemic,” explains Carlos.
Creating personalized brain training regimen
Cognitive Assessment Battery (CAB)™ is a tool developed by the company to identify cognitive deficiencies. It’s a complete online neurocognitive assessment tool made up of an online screening questionnaire and a battery of digital tasks. These tasks are designed to measure 22 different cognitive areas such as attention and concentration, perception, memory, executive function, and coordination, as well as physical, psychological, and social well-being.
“The results from this assessment may show evidence of deficits in different cognitive areas, which can help explain why someone may have poor performance in certain activities or why some skills were never fully developed.”
The goal of the company is to make its technology available to all communities so people can recover and maintain their cognitive health as needed in an affordable and personalized way.
Leadership traits
“The classical situational leader who adapts across styles according to events, audiences, and level of information. After years of managing people, I have learned that to inspire others I have to communicate my vision in very simple terms and always provide real-life examples of how we are making a difference in people’s lives thanks to our solutions.”
Carlos urges leaders to have a very clear strategy that focus the energy of their team upon executing concrete actions and be always ready to fail within a controlled environment.
The success mantra
“Users and patients come first. Develop a clear solution that solves real, relevant problems with operational excellence and empirical evidence. Constantly gathering feedback and spending time analyzing data is the only way to put yourself in a well-informed position for decision making.”
Shaping the future of cognitive medicine
“CogniFit is a life-changing technology in the hands of consumers that can help solve many human cognitive issues. I think we are shaping the future of cognitive medicine by changing the way people can deal with their brain health.”
A Holistic Approach
Not familiar with shortcuts to success, Yaron and his team look at a medical need as a whole and try to figure out the best rational solution. “We realized that often, the solution to a certain need should be multi-disciplinary, involving a medical device, a drug and even biologics. Meanwhile, regulatory-wise, such complicated solution could be extremely challenging. But, combination products will be more popular in the future, as new conceptual technologies become available,” he opines. To be more specific, for Yaron, there is almost no “impossible”. Instead, he looks at every challenge as rationally as possible, trying to stay away from myths of any kind. With a bold and holistic approach, Yaron is determined to make a difference in bone therapy in the coming years.
Company: CogniFit
Website: www.cognifit.com
Management: Carlos Rodriguez, CEO
Founded Year: 1999
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Description: Cognifit is a healthcare company developing online cognitive assessments and brain training computer programs.