The future of depression treatment could be as simple as wearing a headset
Flow Neuroscience just closed their seed round, bringing them one step closer to changing the way we treat depression today. Flow developed a medication-free, non-invasive, personal medical device that can not only address depression physically in the brain, but collect data through an app to further increase our knowledge of the disease and its causes. We asked the company’s CEO, Daniel Månsson, a few questions about their funding announcement, and he provided us insights about where depression treatment is headed:
Tell us about the funding round. How much did you raise, who was involved, and what will you be using it for?
DM: We raised $1.1M. We have three investors, including SOSV, an angel investor, and Khosla Ventures as the lead investor. The team at Khosla was enthusiastic and it all went very fast. Now we have this money to actually go to market. The most important milestone is to get the regulatory approval in Europe, because this is a medical device that we’re building. We’re planning on getting approval this year, and then we’re going to start selling the product — so, producing a couple of thousand units, doing marketing, and of course hiring people. We’re looking for a marketing person, a PR person, and a digital growth hacker.
What are your thoughts on the current depression treatment landscape that we have today?
DM: I think it’s very problematic. We have basically two ways of treating people today. It’s either antidepressants, which is by far the most common, and then we have therapeutics, which is the field I’m representing, because I’m a clinical psychologist. I mean, if we’re looking at the antidepressants, they have a lot of side effects. That’s the big problem. 65% of people get side effects from them and they can be quite severe. Many, many people get sexual problems from them. A bunch of people get heightened anxiety in the beginning, which can actually lead to more suicides. And then we have a bunch of other things like nausea, weight gain, and so on. There’s a lot of problems with this. The problems with my field, therapeutics, is that it’s not very scalable. It’s hard to reach a psychologist, and many people hesitate to do that, because we have a stigma around it also. So we want to build something that could be delivered to as many people as possible, fast and easy, and which doesn’t include these horrific side effects.
How is your approach different than others who are working in the brain stimulation technology field?
DM: We are only using this technique in a way that has been proven effective. I’ve been following this field for five years now, going to the big conferences, and talking to the researchers and who are leading the field. We have one of the most published researchers in the depression and tDCS field with us. So I would say that our approach is different because we base everything that we do on very solid scientific evidence.
Your product is a little less intimidating than other brain stimulation technologies because it appears to look like a personal headset. Can you give a description of how Flow Neuroscience’s technology works?
DM: What our tDCS [transcranial direct-current stimulation] does is it sits on the patent’s head in a non-invasive way, outside of the head, on top. We send a very weak current of two point zero millions, which is equivalent to a nine volt battery basically. It can feel a bit tingly on the electrode, but otherwise you basically don’t feel it. We send in that current, and that affects the neurons in the brain to become a little bit more active on the left side, and a little bit less active on the right side of the head. This has been proven to have an effect of about 30–35% on depression reduction.
Do you see any trends in depression treatment or prevention that you believe can help people?
DM: Yes, there are a few. I think the treatment area for depression and mental health issues will overall will change a lot in the upcoming five to 10 years. You’ve probably seen in the papers that there’s been a bunch of advancement in what you could call drugs — for example, marijuana for other kinds of mental diseases, and LSD and other drugs for depression. There are also a couple of ketamine trials that are looking very promising. We also see advancements in VR and AR applications that are coming forward, and most of them are for anxiety, but also some are for depression and PTSD. Then we have even more advanced, new kinds of technology for doing deep brain stimulation and so on. That could also advance things further, but that is a more invasive kind of treatment. I see this field as a quite interesting one going forward to the next five to 10 years.
What motivates you and your team to make this company succeed?
DM: I don’t have a personal story of depression, but I’ve always had almost a manic interest in mental health. When I wanted to become a psychologist, I just found it extremely fascinating to talk to people and understand people. And when I started seeing patients, it became extremely obvious that it’s very hard to treat this disease, and it’s very hard to treat the big numbers. So basically our motivation is to solve a big problem, and that is very interesting to do. We have another angle on it. We’re using a new angle to solve a problem that we’re manically interested in.
How did HAX accelerator impact your company?
DM: In the beginning, the fact that somebody who a big actor in hardware, like Duncan from HAX, told us: “You are good enough, you’re a good team, you have a good product,” meant a lot. It was wonderful to hear someone from another country who was running a great accelerator say that to us. Then they helped us a lot in doing hardware development, because we didn’t know much about it. We learned fast, and it was a great experience to work with Peter, Gary, and Noel at HAX, along with all the people out in Shenzhen providing the design and the manufacturing knowledge. That was extremely valuable.
What else should people know about Flow Neuroscience?
DM: What we are basically doing is going through hundreds and hundreds of papers regarding depression, and we’re looking at everything. We’re looking at a exercise, nutrition, and social support, trying to take everything that we find and put it into our app after we have condensed it. Then we put that together with the actual tDCS equipment, so that what we are building becomes an expertise product regarding depression. We don’t do anxiety, PTSD, or other mental health conditions. We only do depression right now, and we want to be the best actor in the depression treatment field.
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Written by Kayla Liederbach
