Punto Health Offers Personalized Care Plans and Remote Monitoring for People with Dementia
Anna Muñoz-Farré and Jack Eckersley have teamed up to create an app that makes life a bit easier for people with neurodegenerative diseases and gives healthcare providers confidence as they monitor these challenging patients.
The Challenge
Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating diagnosis on many levels. For the person diagnosed, it’s the beginning of a long, hard road of mental decline. For the patient’s family, it could be the beginning of an arduous life as unpaid caregivers. It’s also a burden on physicians, who feel the weight of giving a diagnosis for which they have no treatments or cures.
A bright spot in the dark world of Alzheimer’s and other dementias is that we’re living in a unique moment of innovation for this field. There are new disease-modifying treatments, blood-based biomarkers for diagnosing the disease, new devices for analyzing brain health, and, in the case of today’s story, there are new apps that make the management of Alzheimer’s easier for patients, caregivers, and providers.
Origin Story
Like so many innovative companies in the Alzheimer’s world, Punto Health was shaped by a personal story. When Anna Muñoz-Farré was a teenager, she saw her grandfather descend into Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia. For 10 years she watched the diseases rob him of his independence and his identity. She also saw the heavy toll it took on her grandmother, who was the primary caregiver, and her extended family. It registered at a deep level that this was a disease that didn’t just impact an individual – it shook a whole family.
Muñoz-Farré held onto that memory as she went off to university in Barcelona and studied industrial and biomedical engineering. She began her career in research working in pediatrics, helping kids with mobility issues, followed by a stage at MIT. From there she developed a love of artificial intelligence and began exploring how AI and machine learning could be used in the field of neurodegenerative diseases.
In 2023, Muñoz-Farré got the entrepreneurial bug. It was time to take her skills and passions and build something new. She knew broadly that she wanted to come up with a product that helped people and families just like hers who were dealing with neurodegenerative diseases, but she didn’t know exactly what it should look like.
So she attacked the problem like an engineer, putting aside her assumptions and beginning with curiosity. Over the course of a year, Muñoz-Farré sat down with dozens of people – from renowned neurologists to caregivers – to better understand what patients and providers go through when faced with dementia diagnoses. She wanted to learn the true pain points, so that whatever she built would be truly useful. She also needed to make sure that whatever she built could get reimbursed, so that it was economically viable.
As she conducted these interviews, the framework for Punto Health took shape. What if she could design a digital platform that offered personalized care plans and targeted education and support for people with dementia and their caregivers? And what if that same platform could give over-extended neurologists and primary care doctors a way to actively monitor their patients with Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia?
Jack Eckersley, a senior software engineer with a background in physics and natural sciences from the University of Cambridge, joined Anna as co-founder. Eckersley’s decision to join the venture was driven by a desire to apply his extensive software engineering skills, honed at companies like Morgan Stanley, Thought Machine, and BenevolentAI, to a truly meaningful problem.
Having witnessed the impact of neurodegenerative diseases on families and the healthcare system, Eckersley was motivated by the opportunity to create technology that could make a real difference in people's lives. He saw in Punto Health a chance to leverage his expertise in building robust, scalable systems to address the complex challenges of dementia care.
Under the Hood
The Punto Health app, which Anna Muñoz-Farré developed with her co-founder Jack Eckersley, features two main components: PuntoCare and PuntoClinic. PuntoCare is designed for people who have received a diagnosis of a cognitive impairment – from the early stages of mild cognitive impairment to advanced dementia – and their caregivers. The app offers personalized care plans with clinically-validated resources, including cognitive exercises, activity recommendations, and nutrition tips. Punto Health is validating their care plans in collaboration with their clinical partner Ace Alzheimer Center in Barcelona, one of the largest dementia care centers in Europe.
PuntoCare also incorporates a digital biomarker that assesses cognitive status through speech, tracking progress and facilitating early detection of health issues. For caregivers, PuntoCare provides essential guidance to support their loved ones and care for themselves, ensuring they feel equipped and empowered.
“People need to know how to cope with a lot of different situations, especially when patients have behavioral symptoms in the later stages, like hallucinations and trouble with hygiene,” says Muñoz-Farré.
Muñoz-Farré is quick to add that Punto Health isn’t trying to replace the many strong educational resources that exist online. Any patient or caregiver can look up information about dementia from trusted resources like the Alzheimer’s Society in the UK or the Mayo Clinic. Punto Health makes those up-to-date guidelines personal through daily assessments and AI-driven interactions. They also make those guidelines more actionable using gaming strategies like incentives, prizes, and progress tracking.
“These guidelines and activities are things that have been validated and everyone knows it's what you should do, but no one really does,” says Muñoz-Farré.
The other side of the product, PuntoClinic, supports healthcare professionals. It’s designed for the busy neurologist or primary care doctor who only sees their patient once a year. They don’t want a whole year to pass without any cognitive health updates, but until now, they haven’t had any choice. PuntoClinic provides continuously recorded data on a dashboard that can be accessed during consultations. This data will also enable an anomaly alert system and facilitate remote pre-screening and patient selection at scale.
“Many primary care doctors lack specific knowledge and confidence in diagnosing and treating dementia, especially in rural areas with limited access to specialty units. There is also high concern about ensuring appropriate care and pathways following a diagnosis. According to an Alzheimer's Society report, only 16% of patients reported having received enough support,” says Muñoz-Farré. “Basically Punto would give them this kind of reliable source or tool that they could use. They would actually have a follow-up plan.”
Next Steps
An end-to-end platform for managing the daily challenges of Alzheimer’s and other dementias sounds like a win for patients and caregivers. A clinical dashboard for physicians dealing with neurodegenerative diseases is another win. But the million dollar question is if – as the Punto Health team has reason to suspect – their interventions can also save money. That’s what Muñoz-Farré and her team have to prove next. They’ll be concluding economic impact studies simultaneously in Spain and the UK over the next year.
As they come to market, Punto Health is focusing first on reaching healthcare providers, insurers, and the pharmaceutical industry, after which they’ll open up the app directly to consumers through partnerships with Alzheimer’s associations.
If all goes as planned with their next round of pilots, Punto Health will rollout simultaneously in Spain (where they have deep clinical partnerships) and the UK (where the team currently resides). For Muñoz-Farré, the two-country rollout is a differentiator and strength of the company, because it sets them up well for a broader European expansion.
Join us in welcoming Anna Muñoz-Farré, Jack Eckersley, and the Punto Health team to StartUp Health’s Alzheimer’s Moonshot Community.
Connect with Punto Health via email
Call for Alzheimer’s Innovation
We’re looking for founders and CEOs leading digital health, life science, or biotech companies that are solving the biggest health challenges of our time. Since we reached our initial Alzheimer’s Moonshot Community goal in just one quarter, we’re opening up 20 new spots through our annual membership program. We’ll officially announce the next group of companies during CTAD in late October, where we will also host a community meetup.
If you’re mission-driven, collaborative, and ready to contribute as much as you gain, you might be the perfect fit. Learn more and apply today.
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Published: Sep 26, 2024