Earlier this month, the Colorado Veterans Treatment Courts Conference was held at the Veteran Services Center in downtown Denver. At the conference, John Kelley, Vietnam War veteran and CEO of digital health startup CereScan, spoke to the crowd about some of the many struggles facing our veterans. “Among veterans, there are currently 20 suicides reported on average per day,” he said.
According to Cyber Med News, Kelley’s company CereScan, works with veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury and/or toxic brain injury. Veterans undergo a preliminary examination, which includes a comprehensive clinical history. Then, CereScan’s software compares each veteran’s data with the thousands of patient records stored in its database, searching for patterns that indicate neurological damage or disease. When the analysis is complete, the company reports the software’s findings to medical professionals, who then diagnose each individual veteran’s condition and create custom-tailored treatment plans.
Kelley addressed the ongoing measures that are being taken to combat PTSD. “Over the last 14 years, almost a trillion dollars have been spent privately and publicly to address PTSD and traumatic brain injury,” said Kelley. Despite the ongoing efforts of researchers at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Stanford, the needle hasn’t been moved when it comes to suicides among veterans.
According to Business Den, the startup just wrapped up a successful investment round in December in which it raised $5.18 million, bringing the total funding to $22 million. In the next six months, CereScan plans to sell database access to medical professionals, who are able to compare their patients to the information in the CereScan database.
