Massachusetts Digital Health (MeHI) has chosen Artifcts and seven other companies to participate in a two-month sandbox program this spring to support innovation related to healthy aging, including physical, mental, and/or social health. Two of the other finalists are also AARP AgeTech Collaborative companies. Read the full announcement from MeHI here.
Artifcts will meet with leading researchers, MassDigital Ecosystem organizations including state agencies, venture capitalists, and other innovators creating digital health solutions that improve the lives of older adults to help scope a brain health research project. At the conclusion of the Sandbox program, Artifcts will pitch its product and Sandbox research project for the opportunity to win $50,000 to complete the project.
"We're excited! MeHI is trying to help accelerate the innovation lifecycle by making the introductions, sharing the lessons learned, and helping companies develop research theses with fewer brick walls. We're here and ready to continue supporting and playing a role in the health aging ecosystem," said Heather Nickerson, Co-founder and CEO of Artifcts.
Research has already established that social engagement and sense of purpose are critical at all ages, especially those with diagnoses that affect brain health. Together with MassDigital our research could yield data to support our existing anecdotal observations that Artifcts helps with social connection, bolsters sense of purpose, and combats loneliness. We could also explore the memory recall aspect of Artifcting and its clinical effects. Any Artifct can rely on a combination of short- and long-term memory recall, e.g., mementos and photos from their youth as well as those that are more recent photos, mementos, and artistic creations. How does this recall-based experience affect the quality of life for those living with dementia, potentially including: mood, resiliency to day-to-day frustrations, interest in other social engagements, and cooperative care behaviors?
"Artifcts is not your run of the mill book or app asking you to record stories and memories from general questions. Artifcts are inherently autobiographical and start with an object or photo. Only you know and can write or orate the story/description for your own Artifct," said Ellen Goodwin, Co-founder and CSO of Artifcts. "This means that you could, in theory, use the structured and unstructured data inherent to the Artifct as input for machine learning to observe changes in vocabulary, sentence structure, detail level, sentiment, and even voice. Could detecting these changes reveal changes in brain health or alert people to potential cognitive impairment? Could the model become predictive, too? We'd love to find out!"
Stay tuned as we proceed through the MassDigital program to select a research partner from the Massachusetts Digital Health Ecosystem to pitch MeHI at MIT on June 28 for funding to support our future research into brain health! Local? RSVP to come watch!
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