Aetna (Hartford, CT) has announced that it will offer MyBrainSolutions as part of its wellness and behavioral health benefit packages, which are designed for improve productivity and the overall health and well-being. Developed by startup Brain Resource (San Francisco, CA), MyBrainSolutions provides a Web-based brain assessment tool that identifies an individual’s brain profile and recommends training games, exercises, and interactive videos to help optimize brain health, reduce stress, and increase productivity. Among the resources on the website are games, videos, and trackers designed to improve stress management, memory and attention. A dashboard helps users monitor their results as part of an overall brain health assessment. The services were designed for employers seeking to improve productivity and the health and well-being of their workforce.
“You think about all of the things people do in terms of physical; they are far and many. But most people do practically nothing to improve their brain health,” says Savannah DeVarney, vice president, product marketing for Brain Resource in an interview with Medgadget. “On MyBrainSolutions, there are videos you can watch, there are articles you can read, and tools that you can use to track offline habits, that are all under the guise of trying to get the user to improve brain health,” DeVarney explains. In all, the website offers users a choice of 30 modules. “We are working to give people the tools they need to form positive habits based on what we know about the brain and then engage them in online exercises that can directly improve the way people thing, their cognitive capacities and their emotional capacities.”
“The assessment component of the service has a questionnaire component but the majority of it is an interactive, almost game-like experience. There are a suite of tasks that directly measure aspects of brain function. There are things like choice reaction time, for example, which is an online test where there are two dots on the screen and one lights up at a time and you have to indicate which one you saw,” DeVarney says. “In this example, we are measuring your accuracy and your speed at responding. And there are a total of 16 different ones that the user goes through in that domain. And the results come back to you on your dashboard.”
“Clinical evidence clearly demonstrates the correlation between brain health and physical health,” said Hyong Un, MD, Chief Psychiatric Officer for Aetna Behavioral Health in a statement. “MyBrainSolutions’ unique approach uses the latest knowledge about the interconnected nature of the brain to provide integrative training that helps people regulate their emotions, thoughts, and feelings.”
“We have seen significant interest and momentum build around the concept of brain health,” said Gregory A. Bayer, Ph.D. chief executive officer of Brain Resource, Inc. in prepared remarks. “Employers are looking for better ways to engage employees in wellness programs and promote resilience, and our solutions fill the gap between wellness information and action.”
Link: My Brain Solutions