Swedish medtech outfit Flow Neuroscience has closed a $9m Series A round led by Khosla Ventures, Swiss Health Ventures (part of insurer CSS Group) and Zühlke Ventures.
Kirin Health Innovation (part of Kirin Holdings), HAX (part of SOSV), and Schox also participated in the funding round.
The start-up was founded in 2016 by Daniel Månsson and Erik Rehn, coming from backgrounds in clinical psychology and neuroscience respectively. Flow Neuroscience describes itself as “the creator of Europe’s only medically approved transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) device and behavioural therapy app for depression”.
The company says it plans to use the funding for research into “self-managed solutions” for other conditions, including anxiety, and to seek approval from US regulators to begin selling its existing product, the Flow headset, there. The device has been on sale in the UK and EU since 2019.
In February, Flow Neuroscience acquired fellow tDCS start-up Halo for an undisclosed amount.
Månsson, who serves as CEO of Flow Neuroscience, commented: “With accessibility at the forefront, we have a three-fold mission at Flow over the coming years; to advance our current treatment to be more patient-specific and to treat more people suffering from depression; To accelerate our collaboration with healthcare systems to provide alternative options for clinicians to prescribe and a complementary solution to reduce waiting times; And, to work in collaboration with researchers in the field of tDCS to validate further self-managed treatment solutions for a wider range of mental health disorders, such as anxiety.”
Dr Alexander Morgan, MD, partner at Khosla Ventures, added: “Bringing this portable, self-managed treatment to US patients will create a scalable, accessible solution to support the millions of people living with depression. The Flow approach can be adjunctive to other forms of therapy and can be an option for those who have not responded to other forms of treatment.
Morgan continued: “We believe everyone in the world should have access to personalized, data-driven therapies. Flow is also empowering to users, as it provides substantial convenience and privacy; people can use it at home at times of their own choosing.”
Flow Neuroscience is the latest in a series of mental health medtech start-ups to attract investor interest, including several Irish companies. Woebot Health reached a funding total of $114m last month, while Frankie Health secured $1.25m of seed money in January. Sweden’s start-up community has also seen a lot of success in general, with grocery delivery app Kavall’s $5.8m raise this week and e-bike rental service Vässla getting $11m in June.
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