Brooklyn Health Secures $6.5M to Transform Mental Health Measurement in Clinical Trials

Brooklyn Health, a neuroscience technology company, has closed a $6.5 million seed funding round led by HealthX Ventures. The investment included participation from Metrodora Ventures, Story Ventures, RiverPark Ventures, Laconia Capital, Everywhere Ventures, Hypothesis Studio and Blue Falcon Capital. The company plans to use the capital to expand its team, accelerate commercial deployments with pharmaceutical companies and enhance its Willis clinical outcome assessment platform.

The funding addresses a critical challenge in central nervous system clinical trials, where traditional clinical interviews serve as the primary outcome measure for treatment evaluation. These interviews, which rely on observation-based symptom scoring, face significant limitations in standardization and objectivity. According to Brooklyn Health, the subjective nature of these assessments makes them susceptible to biases and contributes to unreliable outcome measures, potentially explaining the high failure rates observed in CNS clinical trials.

Brooklyn Health's Willis platform represents a shift toward digital phenotyping in clinical assessment. The platform consists of three integrated components: OpenWillis, a shared library of digital phenotyping methods; WillisPipeline, designed for organizations collecting and processing behavioral data into clinically meaningful measures; and WillisAPI, which enables digital health platforms to process collected data using scientifically validated measures. This architecture allows pharmaceutical sponsors to leverage existing, scientifically accepted measures rather than investing in developing and validating novel assessment tools.

"Measuring treatment efficacy in neuroscience clinical trials is hard because of how subjective clinical assessments can be," said Anzar Abbas, neuroscientist, founder and CEO of Brooklyn Health. "Willis allows pharmaceutical sponsors to improve the accuracy and reliability of measures in their trials in a way they've never been able to before. It's thrilling, because if we reduce barriers to drug development, we get closer to a future where patients get more targeted, precise and effective care."

The investment comes amid growing activity in the CNS clinical trials sector. Grey Matter Neurosciences secured $14 million in January to develop an ultrasound headset for Alzheimer's disease patients. Other companies including Lexeo Therapeutics, Neumora, IQVIA and TFS HealthScience are advancing various approaches to CNS drug development and clinical research services. Brooklyn Health's focus on improving assessment methodology positions it to support these broader efforts by providing more reliable outcome measurements across the neuroscience therapeutic landscape.

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