Life Sciences Today
Brain Health, Behavior, and the Future of Dementia Prevention - Life Sciences Today Podcast Episode 42
We’re excited to be back for another episode of the Life Sciences Today Podcast by Healthcare IT Today. My guest today is David Bates, Founder and CEO at Linus Health. I talk with David Bates about Linus Health’s mission to transform brain health from late-stage “sick care” to proactive, preventive care. David explains his journey from signal detection research and investing in built-environment technologies to founding Linus Health around the insight that behavior is the primary observable output of the brain. We discuss Linus’s 3-minute digital cognitive assessments that turn rich behavioral signals into thousands of digital biomarkers, enabling highly sensitive, objective measurement of cognition and early detection of impairment years before symptoms. Our conversation covers the company’s focus on primary care and health systems as core customers, revenue and ROI in fee-for-service and value-based care, and Linus’s data moat of large, diverse, longitudinal datasets. We explore how clinically integrated, consumer-accessible tools could make brain health monitoring continuous—like a “blood pressure cuff for the brain”—and why this paradigm shift is critical for both healthcare delivery and drug development.
Check out the main topics of discussion for this episode of the Life Sciences Today podcast:
- How did your background in signal detection, multimodal sensing, and investing lead you to found Linus Health?
- What does Linus Health’s platform actually do, and how are your digital assessments different from traditional paper-based cognitive tests?
- Who are your main customers today (primary care, health systems, pharma, payers), and how do you create and capture value across these different buyer types?
- How do you translate thousands of digital biomarkers and AI/ML models into clinically meaningful insights, and how often are your models updated?
- What is your long-term vision? Is the biggest opportunity in supporting drug development, or in becoming a clinically integrated, mass-market “Internet of bodies” brain health platform for consumers?
Now, without further ado, we’re excited to share with you the next episode of the Life Sciences Today podcast.
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