MedRhythms, a Portland-based healthcare startup, has raised $5 million as part of an oversubscribed Series A investment round and added two prominent names to its board.
The proceeds from the sale of equity will be used to add at least five new employees, including software developers and product designers, to its team and ramp up development of its initial product, which is a digital therapeutics device that uses sensors, artificial intelligence, and music to help people recover mobility after suffering from a stroke.
The company originally set out to raise $4 million in equity financing, but upped the round to $5.3 million based on investor interest. As of now, it has successfully closed on $5 million, according to CEO Brian Harris.
Leading the round is Werth Family Investment Associates, a Connecticut-based firm that invests in startups in the pharmaceutical, veterinary, and medical-device field. As a result of its investment, Peter Werth will join MedRhythms’ board. Jean Hoffman, who anchored the company’s seed investment round in early 2017 and subsequently joined its board, also contributed “a significant follow-on investment” to the round, according to the company.
Werth Family Investment Associates was also an investor in Hoffman’s previous company, Putney Inc., which she sold in 2016 for $200 million.
“We found MedRhythms’ strategy and business plan to build digital therapeutics for walking a compelling investment opportunity,” said Werth. “MedRhythms has excellent growth prospects with a pipeline of therapeutic and diagnostic products in large, growing markets and is building the right team to execute.”
In addition to Werth, MedRhythms also recruited Ray Pawlicki as an independent board member. Pawlicki is former chief information officer for Biogen and Novartis and current board member for Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, UMass Memorial, and another Portland-based startup, RockStep Solutions.
Werth and Pawlicki join Harris, Hoffman, and Owen McCarthy, MedRhythms’ president and co-founder, on the board. Bill McKee, former CFO of Barr Pharmaceuticals and Putney, will also join the board as an observer.
“Developing digital therapeutics based on music requires the right mix of talent on the team, including experts in music, biotech, healthcare and technology,” said Harris. “We are thrilled to have Peter Werth lead this financing round, as his track record of success building and investing in healthcare businesses is the right balance of expertise that will allow us to achieve MedRhythms’ mission and vision of making a high-quality clinical impact in the lives of millions of people.”
Finding The Pain Point
In 2013, Harris began offering neurologic music therapy (or NMT) at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. NMT is the therapeutic application of music to cognitive, sensory, and motor dysfunctions due to neurologic disease of the human nervous system, according to MedRhythms’ website.
“Brian started the NMT program at Spaulding and was seeing tremendous results and outcomes with his patients,” McCarthy tells Maine Startups Insider. “He had people ask him frequently, where to get services when they left the hospital—the answer was nowhere. That is when he came to me and said, ‘Owen, how do I reach more people?'”
That question led Harris and McCarthy, who attended the University of Maine together (classes of 2011 and 2010, respectively), to launch MedRhythms in 2015 with a plan to build products that could offer patients a digital-therapeutics device they could bring home with them.
“We started offering services, but realized we couldn’t scale it fast enough, but if we build a digital therapeutics platform we could reach a lot of people fast—so that is what we did,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy said the company plans to pursue FDA approval of its platform, but declined to share a timeline.
“We have been in communication with the agency and have engaged one of the top regulatory consultants in the space,” he said.
While the company’s first product on the platform focuses on the post-stroke population, the pipeline includes products for Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Traumatic Brain Injury, and for those “aging-in-place.”
And its long-term plan includes plans to address not just helping people regain mobility after suffering from neurologic injuries and diseases, but from the wide range of adverse impacts they can have on movement, language, and cognition.
“While we know that we need to stay focused and execute, we know that the people we serve do not only suffer from walking deficits,” Harris said. “It is our vision that we will ultimately serve as a solution to this entire range of impairments. To make this vision come to fruition, we will develop different algorithms as personalized therapeutics to address the many deficits caused by neurologic injuries and diseases.”
Like so many personalized digital devices these days, the amount of data MedRhythms will have access to could be leveraged for other purposes, according to the company.
“The data gathered to deliver our therapeutic can be used to facilitate early detection of new diseases, measure the progression of existing conditions, and predict adverse events, all of which will allow us to fulfill our mission of impacting the lives of everyone affected by neurologic injury and disease,” Harris said.
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So how does the music factor in the treatment? Does the patient select it or is it selected/created based on patient’s unique medical needs?
Harry – thank you for the message! This is a great question.The MedRhythms platform is designed to analyze, accept/reject, and use any song allowing us to give the patient the option to select the type of music or the exact song that they like to use.
One of the main characteristics we look for in a song is the rhythm (how strong it is, how consistent it is, etc). The reason the rhythm is important is from a neuroscience perspective you can use a strong rhythm to activate the auditory system, which automatically activates the motor system (..even with a damaged brain). This allows us to use the rhythm to drive someone to move faster or slower depending on the goals.
If a song doesn’t have an appropriate rhythm, then we can either A) reject it before it is used for a patient or B) modify it by adding a drum track/metronome.
Thank you, Owen. This is fascinating, especially for an old drummer like me.
Thank you, Harry! Feel free to send me an email at owen@medrhythms.com – I can send you the journal articles and some more about the science.
Have a great day!
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