Mental health startup Behavidence, which has raised $ 1.2 million, is raising funds again to plan its expansion.
he Dublin-based company but with a team dispersed around the world has developed an app that uses artificial intelligence to monitor how a person uses their smartphone for symptoms of a mental disorder.
Chief Executive Roy Cohen founded Behavidence last year after previous positions at Facebook and the US technology company VidMob and during his master’s degree in neuroscience.
The startup completed a $ 1.2 million pre-seed round in June led by Israeli Welltech Ventures. It also secured a contract and $ 50,000 from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which will use its app to prevent suicide among veterans. It is now looking for additional funds for further product development and recruitment.
“We’ll probably start our seed round [this month] because right now it looks like we’re going to close over $ 1 million in sales in 2021 and we need more people, ”said Cohen.
“[The app] tracks behavior patterns on your phone, ”he added.
He said the app doesn’t track what a user does in other apps, but rather identifies patterns of how a person uses their phone based on studies that looked at how thousands of people with depression or anxiety use their phones and the frequency of doing so Apps they open and use.
