Applying to an open innovation program is not only about the prize money. It’s not as much about winning as it is about getting to know the corporates and getting pilots with them. Applying to an open innovation is a business decision.
That was the case for Neuropsycad. Despite not having won Protechting’s last edition, they managed to get the wanted pilot with Luz Saúde. When speaking with Diana Prata, Co-founder of Neuropsycad, last week I asked her if the fit between her startup and Luz Saúde was something built throughout the bootcamp and she told me that even before they had a meeting they already knew they would be good for each other.
Diana says that the biggest advantage of Protechting is making the access to data easier. For example, Luz Saúde already had the ethical board approve sharing data for future pilots that could come out of Protechting and Neuropsycad ended up benefiting from that. Usually it takes a long time until a startup has access to patient’s data.
One year later the startup has studied 20 patient’s brain scans and identified their diseases. How does it work? Luz Saúde sends them the scan but doesn’t disclose the disease and through that scan Neuropsycad has to identify the disease and come up with a diagnosis.
They are now working as a sort of second opinion and the good thing about working with medical doctors, besides soaking up their knowledge, is to improve what features in their report like what kind of graphics doctors think are more relevant, which information is more important to have.
When it comes to accuracy the percentages vary. The startup is able to identify with 100% of accuracy if a patient has Alzheimer or if it’s healthy but those numbers change when comparing a patient with Alzheimer with a patient with dementia to 87%. In order to keep up with the work they’ve been doing so far they’re waiting to receive more data from patients and they expect to have studied more until the end of this year.