A Montgomery County startup with a medical device to help doctors better treat concussions just secured another $35 million after raising $15 million earlier this year.
BrainScope Co. Inc. said Wednesday the $35 million in debt financing comes from British professional services firm Aon PLC’s (NYSE: AON) intellectual property solutions group. BrainScope collateralized the loan with its more than decade-old portfolio of patents, a company spokeswoman told the Washington Business Journal.
With this money, BrainScope takes on debt rather than giving away equity in exchange for the investment — and, in doing so, gets “greater access to capital so they can further pursue their growth ambitions without diluting their ownership,” Lewis Lee, CEO of Aon’s Intellectual Property Solutions, said in a statement.
BrainScope’s product is a disposable headset and a handheld device that processes the wearer’s brain activity, aiding in the fast evaluation of suspected traumatic brain injury. The company said it plans to use the latest financing for its commercial expansion and bring new features to the tech platform that powers that device.
Specifically, that involves reaching more hospitals and concussion centers, according to CEO Susan Hertzberg. It also means working with Aon — which brings “significant intellectual property expertise” — as the business looks to improve care for patients with brain injury and disease, Hertzberg said in a statement
The capital infusion comes about six months after BrainScope launched its Concussion Index, an algorithm cleared by the Food and Drug Administration that enhances its core product. It also comes on top of $15 million the company set out to raise in the spring and has since secured, the spokeswoman told us. That built upon roughly $63 million in lifetime venture capital dollars as of April 2020, according to PitchBook data. Investors include Revolution, DBL Partners, ZG Ventures, the Maryland Venture Fund and others. The company had also received about $30 million from eight Department of Defense research contracts.
BrainScope is moving forward from a new headquarters, after relocating Oct. 1 to 5404 Wisconsin Ave. in Chevy Chase, above the Friendship Heights Metro station. It’s about a mile from the company’s former home at 4330 East-West Highway in Bethesda. At 6,500 square feet, the new space is smaller, as the business moves forward with a hybrid model spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic.
BrainScope’s product uses artificial intelligence to arm doctors with the information needed to better determine the likelihood of concussions or bleeding in the brain. It runs on batteries and requires no lab testing, taking less than 20 minutes to run and report results, and requires a doctor’s order for purchase. The company reports its device cuts down on the need for CT scans in the emergency department by more than 30% — important both because it avoids radiation to the patient and gives a full picture of the injury, including severity, to the physician.
BrainScope received FDA clearance in September 2016 to sell its first product, which it developed with the Department of Defense to assess a range of traumatic brain injuries. It’s still the only medical device to receive the agency’s stamp “for the objective identification of the full spectrum of head injury from brain bleeds to concussions,” Hertzberg told us previously.
The company also earned FDA clearance in 2019 and multiple indication expansions for its device, which is used by the U.S. military, hospitals, urgent care and occupational health centers, concussion clinics, university sports programs and clinical trials. Its latest version aims to better assess the millions of U.S. patients who may suffer from concussions annually.
BrainScope, which moved from St. Louis to Bethesda in 2008, was a Fire Awards winner for 2021. Hertzberg joined the company in June 2019 from Franklin, Tennessee-based Prelude Fertility, which merged with Houston’s Inception Fertility a few months prior. She was previously president and CEO of Boston Heart Diagnostics, which she led to its $200 million exit in January 2015, and CEO of French molecular diagnostics company Ipsogen, which then sold to Germany’s Qiagen. She’s also held positions with Quest Diagnostics, Abbott Diagnostics and Oxford Health Plans, now part of UnitedHealthcare.
