NEW YORK – The DNA Company said Wednesday that it has rebranded as My Next Health following a $30 million acquisition of artificial intelligence-driven digital therapeutics app My Pain Sensei. The new company will combine precision medicine and digital therapeutics to develop health management applications based on individual genotypes.
The acquisition gives Toronto-based My Next Health a Class 1 medical device establishment license from Health Canada as well an AI platform for building apps.
My Pain Sensei grew out of Green Sky Labs, a Victoria, British Columbia-based technology incubator in the cannabis industry. Through a partnership with IBM, it created a platform that mined more than 60 million medical records and 32 billion billing claims in search of genomic insights to help patients and their care providers manage chronic pain.
The new My Next Health said that it will take this technology to create a COVID-19 app to assess individual patient risk of developing complications from the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus. This app will measure risk by analyzing genetic predisposition for indicators including inflammatory responses and insulin sensitivity, and also provide tracking tools for individuals to manage and mitigate their risks, the company said.
"Advances in functional genomics may allow us to better understand the underlying biological weaknesses that this novel virus exploits so that we can leverage existing treatment protocols to improve patient outcomes and reduce load on the healthcare system," My Next Health CEO Kashif Khan said in a statement. "The acquisition of MPS will help us tackle these and other problems."
My Next Health will release a free version of the app online May 15, featuring "conversational" AI as well as recommendations for intervention. A fully functional app for health systems and public-health professionals will be available by summer, according to the company.