Adrian Cohen, Headsafe - Interview with Scott Pantel | LSI USA '24

Scott Pantel  0:00  
I'm here with Dr Adrian Cohen, CEO of headsafe, and we're at LSI USA, 24 and innovator pavilion. There's been a lot of traffic over here at the booth, and I just wanted to check in and tell us what you're up to.

Adrian Cohen  0:13  
Wow, we're talking all day long. You know what it's like. But this is a great opportunity for us to meet not just prospective investors, which is always top of the list, but other people in our space, people who provide services. People are on similar journeys, and by and large, trusts that come from a long way away. I'm from Sydney, Australia, to move in the American environment.

Scott Pantel  0:37  
Welcome. Thanks for making the big, big visit here. Tell us about your technology. What problem are you solving?

Adrian Cohen  0:42  
So where technology in the concussion space? So neurocheck is an FDA cleared aid to diagnosis. It's a two minute test that can tell you, as a doctor, whether this person needs to stay away from sport or from the, er, the car accident, the floor, whatever they've done, and when it's safe for them to go back to their activities. No more guesswork. No more who's the president? No more. You know, remember these words that I'm thinking of, all these subjective tests that we know don't work have been replaced by an objective baseline, free test called neurocheck,

Scott Pantel  1:19  
such an important solution, I have 19 and 21 year old boys who play sports, and something like this would have been quite welcome in some of the work that we've done together. And I'm not sure if you know this, but Mike Singletary, former NFL Hall of Famer, is going to be here to be talking about the importance of the work that you're doing and other innovators are doing. So you

Adrian Cohen  1:39  
bring him down here. This is where he needs to be. So we've looked at acute concussion, but we literally invented a brain scanner that fits in a briefcase. Amazing. Our research has been focused on acute concussion, but we need to do the work now in people persisting with symptoms that post concussion symptoms, and also those people later in their career, who have got those problems that, unfortunately we're seeing far too often, movement disorders, emotional disorders, depression, suicide, anxiety and long term that early dementia that we now call CTE. Now we can help prevent that. If you decrease the number of head impacts people have, if you ensure they're taken off the sporting field when they need to be, and not let back on until they're ready, you decrease their long term burden. For people that are in car accidents, for kids that fall off their bike, for older people that fall off a ladder, younger people that fall off their ladder. For our friends in the military, if we can look after their brains, they do better long term, incredible.

Scott Pantel  2:45  
And so why are you? What's the objective here at LSI? Well,

Adrian Cohen  2:49  
we're just at that really critical stage where we're FDA approved. We're ready to commercialize in the US, and we need those investors, those investors, to come out and see us again. You know what? We want to be part of this journey. We're raising the money to put our C suite together, our sales teams here in the US, and to really let this product do what it's supposed to do, and how's

Scott Pantel  3:10  
it going. I've seen a lot of traffic here. Have you had interest from the investment community while

Adrian Cohen  3:14  
you're here? We have, and you know, it's about converting those, showing them the details. We spent a long time getting here. We've done a lot of research, eight clinical trials, seven patents, seven years. There's been a lot of numbers behind this. It's time to get some numbers on those checks. That's right.

Scott Pantel  3:28  
That's right. Very important. And it's not an easy time to be raising capital. How much are you raising and how far does that get you?

Adrian Cohen  3:35  
Right now we're looking at just over three to for a total of 5 million. That gets us through the critical next stage after that is, of course, getting some unit economics, getting our product out there and being used, and showing people that it's actually a viable business. Then we're off to the races. That's easy. That's, you know, that's easy for the next stage of investors, the series A investors, the people who will back a proven product. We're in the business of proving that product out. Now. We've got the technology, we've got the team. We need to get in front of those doctors and get them using it and looking after brains, because fundamentally, we believe saving brains creates lasting value.

Scott Pantel  4:13  
That's right. Well, congratulations. Thank you for being here. We'll continue tracking you before we go, I always like to ask the question, How did you get what brought you here? What was the inspiration and sort of the history of you getting involved in this great company?

Adrian Cohen  4:26  
You know, I'm a sports dog. I've been working this field for over 30 years, particularly interested in head and neck injuries and things we can prevent. We don't want to stop sport. We want people to play sport, but we want to make it as safe as possible. Now, I was given all these tools, by my colleagues, by the neurologists, by the consensus groups in sport, and said, Hey, here's how here's how we assess concussion. I'll call that elephant out right now. Those tools are blunt. They didn't work. They don't help the player, they don't help the team, they don't help the sport, they don't help the public. We can do better. We must. Do better, and we now are able to do better. That's incredible.

Scott Pantel  5:03  
Well, you're solving a big and important problem. We wish you all the best, and we look forward to tracking your progress. Thank you. Thank you very much. You.