Eddie Martucci, co-founder and CEO of Akili Interactive Labs, joins Cheddar News to talk about how the company's gaming software helps kids with ADHD. 

Between Bells

Akili Interactive Set to Go Public via Spac This Year

Welcome back to Between Bells. The company behind the first video game approved as a medical treatment for kids with A. D. H. D. Is going public. Achille interactive will be listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker A. K. A. L. I. Later this year the movies. Thanks to a merger with social capital several to holding core the transaction values the company at one billion dollars joining us now to discuss the news is Eddie Martucci, co founder and Ceo of Achille Interactive labs. Congrats on the merger. Eddie. Such a pleasure to have you. How will this transaction help the company in its efforts to reimagine medicine? Oh thanks so much. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah this transaction is important to us. We spent over a decade developing this new category of medicine that is really the first medicine that's delivered entirely through software. We've spent this last decade proving out the products and setting the standard for clinical validation, meaning studying these types of entertainment and software products like a drug um Where we're going now is to really fulfill our goal to get these types of products into mainstream medicine. Um So we have one approved product and many more behind it and we're looking to scale this and deliver to ideally tens of millions of patients at scale. Over the coming years back in 2020 the Food and Drug Administration approved your video game endeavor Rx which is used to treat A. D. H. D. In Children like we mentioned. Can you walk us how the game does that exactly. Eddie. Sure this is a technology that was studied for over a decade at the university of California san Francisco. It's a really sophisticated technology that is designed to specifically activate the midline prefrontal cortex. That's the part of the brain that controls attention function. And what we've done is develop that technology which is embedded into a product as you see that looks and feels like an action video game. What's happening though is every single second of the experience as someone uses this product there's an algorithm underneath that's deploying this patented technology designed to activate that part of the brain And leading in our clinical trials to improvements and attention. That sounds pretty incredible. When did you realize this needed to be created in the form of a video game? Yeah well when we founded the company um we there were really two big needs that we saw obviously the first being um needs in what we call cognitive health or cognitive functioning. This is things like attention and memory and thinking. These are um functional brain outcomes that actually haven't been very well targeted in medicine with the way we do medicine today. But the other big need that we saw in this in the experience of medicine was just that it was how do patients experience their medicine and especially in brain conditions you know areas like A. D. H. D. Depression. The experience of medicine is awful. It's scary. It's cold it's it's dark people accept really serious side effects. Um And we felt that not only could we bring software based medicine that could fix a lot of those things, we could go over the top and for the first time make medicine that in the moment of the experience was fun. So since we deliver sensory experiences or sensory stimulation um into into a tablet or a phone, we felt like a video game was the best way to do all of those things have something that worked that could engage someone and that while they're using it wouldn't be the first medicine that maybe maybe would be a little bit fun. Anyone makes this video game different from regular video games that are out there on the market. That's a great question. Um There's really 33 aspects to this technology that that make it pretty unique. The first is this patented technology that I was mentioning um which is is a unique and proprietary way to stimulate the part of the brain and controlling attention and that's that's uniquely embedded into our game. And and not in any other products on the market. Um The second big thing um is that this is the way that the technology works is it's forcing users patients who are using the product to actually have to do tasks that that are tough that are actually where their brain is weak and so instead of your average game um that would allow you to do what's easy for you, this does just the opposite. Um And the third big mechanism of the technology is that we spent years building in what we call adaptive algorithms and what that means is that for every single patient using the product um The second by second experience and difficulty is adapting uniquely to each patient's. So um it's a pretty sophisticated technology. But if you zoom out really, this is the first and only video game that has gone through rigorous drug lead clinical trials is now cleared by the FDA and is a prescription video game. What's the response been from parents and Children using this video game? We're really excited. We haven't launched the product broadly yet. It has been available. And um and what we're seeing in this kind of pre launch mode is um you know, people are people are using it, they're getting live prescriptions from their doctor. Um We're really excited to see use metrics that are that are really strong, meaning they're actually taking the product home there. They're downloading it, they're activating it through a remote prescription code which we which we had to invent. Um and they're and they're able to actually use the product on their own at home and and we're really excited when we see the reports come in about how it's helping them in their daily life. Um And so we were very positive on that. But the other thing that's really important is we're seeing good prescribing behavior from doctors as well. So in this pre launch phase we're already up to about 1000 different doctors across the country who have written a prescription for endeavor, our experts, their patients um and and have written refills in many cases. And what that tells us is that the demand and the demand for the product is high I think frankly, um it's probably higher now than it was even a few years ago because what we're all living with these days is something that is putting an even higher burden on our cognitive function than it ever has before. Hey, I am running out of time. But I want to ask you as, you know, there's been a surge of digital health and digital products as medical treatments. How do you plan on staying competitive in this growing space? Sure. Well, the first phase of our life here has been staying competitive by really setting a high bar for clinical evidence and proof that the product works. Um and how to study these products like like a drug, we're going to take the exact same level of rigor. Um and the investment in the high science and the credibility into the market. Um, and so we, we have one product approved, we have a number of products behind it. Um, and we're committed to doing right by patients, which means sitting with patients learning from patients and building a lasting and and really generational new medicine company here that can deliver to millions of patients over time. I'm so intrigued by this technology. We hope you come back Eddie Martucci, co founder and Ceo at Achille Interactive Labs. Thank you so much for your time. Eddie, have a great weekend.