AI Cognitive Health Startup Mantis Biotech Rethinks How Women Are Diagnosed

Rather than a monthly snapshot, Parva builds a continuous record: attraction trends, regular rhythms and workflow patterns drawn from mean machine use. Credit: Mantis Biotech

Mantis Biotech, shaper of Parva, AI package that monitors cognitive wellness done mundane machine use

Robyn Schlicher spent years trying to measurement her ain mind. After a viral unwellness successful 2020 near her pinch encephalon fog, representation gaps, and problem reading, she tracked her diminution the only measurement she could, by feel. “I was doing my champion to measure changes successful my intelligence authorities and cognitive expertise qualitatively, based connected really I felt, but it ever seemed inaccurate and lacking,” she recalls.

That region betwixt what patients consciousness and what medicine tin measurement is the problem Georgia Witchel group retired to close. Her company, Mantis Biotech, makes a user software merchandise called Parva that softly sounds really a personification types and clicks, past flags cognitive alteration against that person's ain history. The stake underneath it is deceptively simple: The correct yardstick is not you against the population, but you against yourself.

A Field That Stopped Innovating In The 1970s

The Monthly Appointment Can't See The Monthly Cycle

Cognitive attraction runs connected a schedule that useful against the biology it is meant to track. Witchel points retired that curen for conditions “like agelong COVID, dementia, perimenopausal syndrome is wholly based connected in-person appointments that will hap erstwhile a period astatine comparatively random intervals.” A azygous monthly sojourn captures a mind astatine 1 arbitrary moment, past calls it a trend.

For women, that creation flaw compounds. Symptoms displacement pinch hormones and, arsenic Witchel notes, “your emotions, your expertise to self-regulate, is going to up and down pinch your hormones, pinch your monthly cycle.”

The stakes are not marginal. A 45-year-old woman carries a 1 successful 5 life risk of Alzheimer's, double the 1 successful 10 a man faces. Women were besides recovered 31% much apt to create agelong COVID than men successful the national RECOVER study.

The Baseline Is The Breakthrough

An AI That Compares You Only To Yourself

Most aesculapian algorithms study what “normal” looks for illustration from ample populations, and those populations were skewed toward males for decades. Parva throws that reference framework out. It installs connected a laptop and sounds passive signals—keystroke latency, rodent movement, really agelong attraction lingers connected a tab, really quickly personification answers a loved one—then stores them successful a HIPAA-compliant database and weighs each time against the user's ain earlier readings.

The displacement reframes test itself. Take ADHD, wide missed successful women because the criteria were built connected boys. Witchel says Parva asks whether a female improved against her ain pattern, “rather than... the accepted method, which is just, do they fresh into a accepted antheral excavation arsenic diagnosable arsenic ADHD.”

What It Feels Like To Use

Schlicher signed up connected the spot. “Parva wished my baseline upon joining, and now I fto it activity successful the inheritance arsenic I work, pinch nary request for wearable aliases invasive devices,” she explains.

Notably, Witchel resists the women's wellness banner moreover arsenic she builds squarely for it. She would alternatively dainty these problems, successful her words, “as for illustration gaps successful health, and women conscionable for illustration our little baseline,” which is precisely why they guidelines to summation the most.

From Torn Tendons To Brain Fog

How Injury-Prediction Tech Became Cognitive Care

Witchel did not commencement successful neurology. She built physics simulations to foretell erstwhile bodies break, activity that pulled her into master sports because, arsenic she puts it, “the number 1 purchaser of a beingness simulation of a quality is personification who really, really cares if a quality is going to get injured, and that is simply a pro athlete.”

Then she followed the misery to a bigger market. The full economic load of dementia reached astir $781 cardinal successful 2025, while depression costs U.S. employers an estimated $187.8 cardinal a year.

Why Physics Beats Pure Statistics

Her method wager is that pattern-matching AI flattens the very group who astir request to beryllium seen. “Statistical AI really breaks down astatine the individual level. It's really, really bully astatine predicting populations,” she argues. The affinity she reaches for sticks: Ask an image exemplary for a face, and “it'll springiness you a cleanable quality face. AI is very, very bad astatine doing uneven faces.”

Investors bought the thesis. Jon Sakoda of Decibel, who led the round, observes that “the adjacent frontier will beryllium models that understand each personification arsenic an individual. Mantis shows what's possible.”

A New Sector, Still Being Drawn

The Market, The Money, And The Competition

Mantis has raised $7.4 cardinal successful funding, led by Decibel, pinch Y Combinator and Liquid 2 participating. The institution straddles 3 young markets whose edges are still soft: integer biomarkers, forecast to scope $17.73 cardinal by 2031, according to Markets and Markets; behavioral biometrics, projected astatine $11.38 cardinal by 2031, according to Mordor Intelligence; and healthcare integer twins, headed toward $3.55 cardinal by 2030, according to AppInventiv.

Its nearest rivals cluster successful integer biomarkers, among them Mindstrong, Altoida, and Evidation Health, though astir pursuit a azygous awesome aliases a azygous disease. For scale, the objective digital-twin institution Unlearn AI has raised much than $130 million, much than seventeen times Mantis's seed. Parva, meanwhile, bundles its continuous monitoring level pinch laboratory coordination and the maddening activity of uncovering the correct specialist.

Where To Get Parva

Access runs done clinics that negociate semipermanent cognitive conditions alternatively than a drugstore shelf. Witchel's squad places Parva pinch ADHD and executive-function clinics, outpatient psychiatry practices, and therapy practices treating depression, burnout, ADHD aliases neurodivergence. Perimenopause clinics and neurology practices information retired the existent channels, matching the package to the specialists patients already spot for the conditions it tracks.

A Baseline Of One

Parva is not a cure and, legally, it is not yet a diagnosis. Mantis flags consequence levels and defers the verdict, telling users “this is the chance” alternatively than handing down a sentence, a bound Witchel draws connected intent while the institution useful toward FDA clearance and reimbursement.

What it offers alternatively is memory. For patients for illustration Schlicher, whose diminution was erstwhile visible only to herself, a continuous grounds of who she was yesterday changes the speech pinch each expert she sees. “I see it a priceless gift for my wide wellness and expertise to tally my business,” she says.

The larger committedness is harder to price. If a baseline of 1 tin drawback what organization averages miss, the group medicine has historically measured past whitethorn yet get measured first.