October 20, 2017
From time to time, the MedtechTalk Podcast will explore stories just outside our vital sector to identify the forces that might impact Medtech Innovation.
In this week’s podcast, we’ll talk to Mylea Charvat, PhD, CEO and founder of Savonix. The digital start-up is creating a cost-effective cognitive assessment platform that can be used to monitor mental cognition; the measure of the brain’s ability to switch between tasks quickly such as remembering sequences of digits or recalling the words of a friend.
According to Charvat, cognition is critical part of everyday life but it isn’t effectively measured as well as our biological functions. “Cholesterol and blood pressure are important and you have to watch those things, but cognition is the fifth vital sign that we don’t talk about,” she states.
Cognitive function is secondary to a number of medical issues, such as depression, diabetes, trauma, and post-operation, and can remit before the more noticeable effects do. For example, if a depressed patient’s cognitive number is in the low-average range before starting medication and then is re-tested a few weeks later, the number may rise even if the patient doesn’t feel emotionally better yet.
In the case of diabetes, which can also cause secondary cognitive impairment, 60% of people fail at managing their insulin. If a doctor tested their patient’s cognition and saw that he or she was in the low-average range, there may be ways they can help, such as advising the patient to set reminders or suggesting that they receive nursing support.
The same can be said for postoperative or trauma patients, who may only need these extra reminders or nursing support temporarily.
Dr. Charvat believes that if every doctor tested their patients’ cognitive function, they would be able to track what is really going on in their brains.
Mylea Charvat, PHD
CEO & Founder
Savonix
Dr. Mylea Charvat is a clinical psychologist, translational neuroscientist, and the CEO and Founder of the digital cognitive assessment company, Savonix. She specializes in working with and leading dynamic healthcare organizations looking to expand the access to and affordability of healthcare using digital tools.
Dr. Charvat founded Savonix to address a critical challenge in the health care world – how do we assess the mental health, specifically the cognitive and emotional function, of patients on a large scale despite limited dollars and insufficient numbers of trained specialists? Savonix has developed mobile tools that utilize critical cognitive data to better understand patients' health, identify those at risk and improve outcomes at the individual and systems level in healthcare.
A trained clinical psychologist with a neuro specialty, Dr. Charvat is a recognized thought leader in her field. She completed her fellowship in clinical neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine and has been a lecturer at Stanford, the University of San Francisco and San Francisco State University. She has authored several peer reviewed articles published in well-respected mental health and neuro-imaging journals. She is a frequent guest author for the Huffington Post, has written for Tech Crunch and has appeared as a subject matter expert at multiple conferences and events, including several with The Atlantic Council.
Dr. Charvat is committed to advancing the integration of behavioral health data into mainstream health and wellness. The inspiration for Savonix came when Mylea’s husband was severely injured in a tragic accident and she experienced first-hand the difficulty in attaining the vital health data her husband needed to achieve recovery – including cognitive screening.
She realized that if access was so difficult for her, with her medical background and all of her connections, it must be virtually impossible for others with no training, expertise, or network. When she reached out to the spouses and parents of other patients, she learned that her experience was not unique and the challenges were widespread and intractable.
Dr. Charvat made the decision to walk away from over a decade of work and the prestigious career trajectory she had been pursuing to a professorship to found Savonix. She committed herself, instead, to addressing the pervasive challenges in access to neurocognitive assessments and the dire need of millions of people for regular, accessible and affordable tests.
Dr. Charvat has been honored as a leader in her field with three consecutive special contribution awards by the Veterans Health Administration and she was recently recognized as a rising woman CEO of Silicon Valley in the Huffington Post.
Previously, Dr. Charvat served as a PTSD specialist and advocate for Veterans and their health at both the VA and Stanford as well as in independent roles. She co-founded the early intervention trauma clinic in Palo Alto that still operates today and has served as a board member for Conard House, a resource provider for patients with chronic mental illness, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
