There is widely agreed to be a brain health crisis. This crisis affects everyone, either directly or indirectly. Around 23% of people infected with COVID will become “long haulers”, where neurological manifestations are common. Nearly one billion people have a mental disorder. In the first year of the COVID pandemic, rates of common conditions such as depression and anxiety went up by more than 25%. Diagnostic approaches are largely subjective and treatment is mostly trial and error. New solutions are needed. 

With the exponential growth in investment attention to brain health – solutions spanning brain wellness to mental health to neurological disorders – tech giants, payers and biotechnology companies have been making forays into this field to identify technology solutions and pharmaceutical amplifiers. So far, their investments have had mixed results. 

In a new paper out in CNS Spectrums, titled “Open innovation: the key to advancing brain health”, a group of 13 global experts from 18 academic and private organizations advocates for further exploration and advancement of open innovation in brain health. 

Jason Searfoss, Chief Investment Officer for Boomtown Accelerators, a group specializing in these platforms, and co-author on the paper, notes, “The concept of Open Innovation (OI) was first coined by Henry Chesbrough to describe the paradigm by which enterprises allow free flow of ideas, products, and services from the outside to the inside and vice versa in order to remain competitive, particularly in rapidly evolving fields where there is abundant, relevant knowledge outside the traditional walls of the enterprise. Boomtown specializes in this type of innovation and we see the brain health field is in dire need of such a platform”. 

Harris Eyre MD PhD, lead of the Brain Capital Alliance, brain health innovation strategist, and lead author on the paper, provided further commentary. “Brain health disorders include five of the top ten causes of disability globally. It’s essential that therapy development initiatives ultimately succeed – large corporations are critical to developing and delivering new solutions in the brain health sector. Large companies have huge resources, market penetration and skills, especially in the dissemination of new ideas, products and services. Additionally, they produce innovations such as smart devices and app platforms that can help patients with neurological maladies and mental illnesses. They are an important component of the innovation ecosystem that includes universities, start-ups and venture capital.” Eyre is also a co-founder of the PRODEO Institute, Senior Fellow for Brain Capital with the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute and strategic advisor to the Heka Fund (a collaboration between Newfund Capital and FondaMental Fondation). 

“I applaud this type of transdisciplinary innovation to tackle the global brain health crisis. Open innovation platforms are an elegant way to foster and fuel linkages and valuable collaboration between world-wide startups and corporate executives and their resources. Let us ensure that we develop such open innovation platforms to deliver valuable and equitable solutions to people across high-, middle- and low-income settings.” Husseini K. Manji MD FRCPC, Visiting Professor at Oxford University and Duke University, and former Global Head of Science for Minds at Johnson and Johnson. 

“This thesis is very interesting and I am delighted to showcase it in CNS Spectrums” noted Editor in Chief, Stephen Stahl MD. “Open innovation platforms provide an elegant way of aligning and synergizing the brain health innovation interests of corporations, venture capitalists, philanthropists and angel investors. Hopefully this paper stimulates novel and valuable activity in the market”

Details of the CNS Spectrums paper: Eyre HA, Searfoss J et al (2022) Open innovation: the key to advancing brain health. CNS Spectrums. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S109285292200092X