The DNA Company, a genomics company that provides evidence-based therapies based on genomic insights, announced that it has rebranded as My Next Health, following the acquisition of artificial intelligence-based digital therapeutics app My Pain Sensei (MPS) for $30 million.
My Next Health will combine digital therapeutics and precision medicine to develop health management apps based on individual genotypes, according to the company. The acquisition also provides Toronto-based My Next Health with a Class 1 medical device establishment license from Health Canada for applications related to chronic pain and COVID-19.
My Pain Sensei founded out of Green Sky Labs, a technology incubator in the cannabis industry. Through a partnership with IBM, My Pain Sensei built a platform that mined over 60 million medical records and 32 billion billing claims in search of genomic insights to help patients and their care providers manage chronic pain as well as other chronic conditions.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how a novel virus can upend the world’s healthcare system at a moment’s notice,” said Kashif Khan, CEO of My Next Health. “But, advances in functional genomics may allow us to understand the underlying biological weaknesses that this novel virus exploits so that we can leverage existing treatment protocols to improve patient outcomes and reduce the load on the healthcare system. The acquisition of MPS will help us tackle these and other problems.”
My Next Health also said that it is developing a COVID-19 app that works by interpreting a person’s genetic pathways for inflammatory responses, insulin sensitivity, and other genomic indicators through identifiable characteristics that factor into risk of COVID-19 complexities. After determining an individual’s risk level, patients can use the app’s recommendations to help mitigate their risk using self-tracking tools that can be shared with their healthcare providers.
In Q1 2020, forty-one digital Health companies were acquired, according to Mercom Digital Health M&A database. Earlier this year, Ginger, a provider of on-demand access to behavioral health, acquired LiveBetter, a mental health app, for an undisclosed amount.
Image Credit: My Pain Sensei (MPS)
