Virtuleap raises $2.5M to use VR and AI for brain health

Virtuleap has raised $2.5 million to use virtual reality and AI to improve brain health in a product dubbed Enhance VR.

GED Ventures Portugal invested in Virtuleap, a startup focusing on healthtech and edtech. Virtuleap has developed a collection of virtual reality games that can be used to evaluate and improve various cognitive abilities, such as memory, attention, motor control skills and spatial orientation.

The company said it can provide essential clinical findings for brain health screening and profiling by collecting data on a single platform.

Neuroscientists have developed these short, intense, and fun games, and they serve as translations of neuropsychological assessment tools, which are then analyzed using artificial intelligence learning tools.

The Enhance VR program, developed by Virtuleap, aims to provide a “gym for the mind” accessible to everyone, and potentially serve in the future as a therapeutic for learning challenges like ADHD and other cognitive disorders. The exercises are divided into seven cognitive categories: memory, attention, information processing, mental flexibility, problem-solving, motor control and spatial orientation.

The company is also building an upcoming second product, Cogniclear VR, which it plans to launch in 2024. It is a virtual reality-based cognitive screening tool that is being co-designed with partners like Lusíadas Saúde and Roche Portugal to be sensitive enough to potentially detect a cognitive disorder so early in its tracks (e.g. subjective cognitive decline) to enable earlier intervention for better health outcomes concerning cognitive illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease.

Amir Bozorgzadeh, CEO of Virtuleap, said in a statement this investment “enables us to ramp up development and commercialization of our frontier VR cognitive solutions at a time in which an impending ‘cognition crisis’ is well underway.”

The company is working on creating AI learning algorithms using the volumetric datasets of psychometric, physical, and physiological data (250K+ data points every 3 minutes) to potentially correlate cognitive performance to mental health.

GED Ventures Portugal led this investment round, reinforcing its commitment to #Tech4Purpose.

Bibi Sattar Marques, partner at GED Ventures Portugal, said in a statement, “the investment in Virtuleap reflects the company’s strategic approach of investing in technology that positively impacts people’s lives, particularly their health. By bringing together technology and well-being, we are committed to pave the way for a new era in mental health that is accessible to everyone.”

GED is an independent and international financial group in Europe, the United States of America, and South America. Currently, it manages more than a billion euros in assets in the areas of venture, private equity, and Infrastructure.

The flagship product, Enhance VR, has gained over 60,000 early registered users without any marketing efforts. Its global reach is evident with its availability in major VR app stores and translations in five languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese. The company will be adding German, French, and Dutch by Q1 2024.

Scientific credibility

The company said its commitment to research is evident with four published papers, one of which showcases a promising pilot study. This study reveals our capability to enhance processing speed in students with ADHD.

And the company has secured $1.8 million in in-bound commercial agreements (mix of pilots, licensing, and development support) with companies like Penumbra, HP, and BehaVR, underscoring the industry’s demand for our transformative technology.

In collaboration with Roche, the firm is developing Cogniclear VR. This groundbreaking tool is set to revolutionize early cognitive illness detection, potentially outpacing any current solution in speed and accuracy.

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz