Isaac Health picked up $10.5 million in a series A funding round to continue scaling its in-home memory clinic for brain health and dementia care.
Flare Capital Partners led the round, backed by new investors Industry Ventures and Black Opal Ventures. Existing investors Meridian Street Capital, B Capital and Primetime Partners also doubled down, some increasing their stake. The startup has now raised $16.3 million, including a $5.7 million seed round last year.
Since launching in 2022, Isaac Health has grown rapidly and is now focused on expanding its partnerships with health plans and health systems as well as enhancing its technology, Julius Bruch, M.D., Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Isaac Health, told Fierce Healthcare.
"On the growth front, we've added a number of new partnerships. We've really crystallized our go-to-market fit and strategy. We are squarely focused on health plans, both on Medicaid and Medicare primarily, but also covering health systems," Bruch said. "That's where we see really the strength of Isaac Health pay out the most."
The company's services are newly available in all 50 states as it has expanded its footprint since last year.
"That's especially important for some of the national partners that we are now beginning to serve," Bruch said.
A former physician and medical researcher in the fields of neurodegenerative disease and dementia, Bruch teamed up with Joel Salinas, M.D., a neurologist with expertise in behavioral neurology and neuropsychiatry, to launch Isaac Health with the mission of bringing an innovative approach to brain health. The company offers virtual and in-home care services to patients, with a focus on screening and early detection, diagnosis, treatment and care management. The company is using technology to make brain health more accessible to patients.
"We've done a lot of investment and made a lot of progress on the technology front. We've really heavily invested in really building out our AI detection mechanisms. We are now really effective at identifying undiagnosed dementia cases and guiding our physicians and clinicians to more effectively diagnose dementia, to be more accurate, for the process to be faster to diagnosis, and to ultimately cut down those waiting times and get to a level where we can really break down those barriers to access specialist dementia care," Bruch said.
The U.S. faces a growing shortage of neurologists, creating care "deserts" around the country that force patients to wait longer and drive further to receive care.
In 2023, 40% of U.S. counties had no practicing neurologist. This specialist shortage also coincides with rising demand for care. Researchers estimate that 42% of Americans over age 55 will eventually develop dementia. Aging of the U.S. population is expected to cause the number of new dementia cases per year to double by 2060, according to data from the National Institutes of Health.
More than 7 million individuals in the U.S. are living with Alzheimer's dementia, with numbers projected to grow to more than 12 million by 2025.
Many U.S. patients are waiting an average of 36 months for an appointment, which means they are losing crucial time for preventive care for cognitive decline.
“Adults over age 65 are the largest and fastest-growing group in the U.S., and that means that the number of persons developing, living with and affected by Alzheimer’s disease and other causes of dementia is going to continue to skyrocket,” Salinas, chief medical officer and co-founder of Isaac Health, said. “Our health system simply isn’t equipped to meet the scale and complexity of these specialized care needs, and, as a result, patients face excessive delays, missed windows for intervention and increasing rates of emergency visits and hospitalizations as disease progression and caregiver burnout intensify. This raise enables Isaac Health to step up and fill these care gaps at a time when we face a growing public health crisis.”
Isaac Health developed an artificial-intelligence-enabled brain health platform that combines expert clinical care with scalable digital infrastructure, including patented AI screening capabilities, to detect, diagnose and manage dementia from home. The company partners with health systems and health plans to screen, diagnose, treat and manage their populations who have brain health conditions, starting with dementia.
The company says its predictive machine learning can quickly identify patients with different cognitive and brain health conditions and pair them with a team of specialists that offers center-of-excellence level care.
Isaac Health touts that its services have produced proven results: 73% of patients report improved neurocognitive function over the course of six months, 92% of patients in cognitive therapy report improvement against cognitive goals in only three weeks and some patients have seen a delay in cognitive decline by up to three years.
"The core challenge and problem statement that we are very focused on is the lack of access to specialist care. Patients typically wait around a year in most cities for an appointment with memory specialist, and about two years now in most of the rural U.S.," Bruch said. "Beyond those access challenges, we just want to provide access really high-quality care in a timely manner and leveraging technology essentially to do that."
Isaac Health's services also help its partner organizations, including health plans and health systems, reduce medical costs and more effectively manage patient populations.
For primary care groups, Isaac Health can function as a specialist extension to focus on effectively managing the dementia patient population, Bruch said. Hospital systems are facing capacity constraints, and Isaac Health's services can help scale the health systems' limited capacity into rural areas or satellite locations where there is a lack of experts or specialty capabilities, he noted.
"With new disease modifying therapies, many hospitals and providers lack the expertise to do the diagnosis work-up and long term management. They're also looking to us to support them in the management of those patients," he added.
With the fresh funding, Isaac Health will continue investing in growth and building out its proprietary tech platform, executives said.
The company is focused on expanding its network of partnerships with health plans and health systems to meet the rising demand for improved brain health and dementia care, outcomes and access, especially for underserved populations.
"We want to reach as many of the dementia population in the U.S. as possible because there's such a huge shortage in specialist supply and we have a large market to fill and address," Bruch said.
He added, "I think we're very much still in the early adopter phase with the concept of end-to-end dementia management. They all acknowledge that they have a massive need. In the case of health plans, it's very much about the economics of closing gaps and improving their patients' health and keeping them out of hospitals and emergency departments."
Isaac Health aims to make significant technology investments to enhance its AI-driven detection for earlier and more accurate diagnosis at the population level. The company also plans to expand its virtual care infrastructure and smart care management tools that support both patients and caregivers.
The tech build-out will include predictive clinical decision support systems to guide proactive treatment and ongoing care. And the company will enhance its data and analytics capabilities to measure outcomes and optimize care pathways.
“Cognitive and brain health is one of the most pressing and underserved areas of healthcare, with far-reaching implications for patients, families, health systems, and payers,” said Ian Chiang, partner at Flare Capital Partners. “We are impressed by Isaac Health’s ability to provide clinically effective conservative dementia management and active treatment with anti-amyloid therapy to reduce healthcare services utilization for its Medicare & Medicaid partners while maintaining a stellar patient experience."