22-year-old wins Sequoia backing – and it’s not her first startup

Jennifer Zhang was just 15 when she created a fall detection system for people with dementia.

“I started designing that system because I have my own family experience with dementia. When I was born, my grandmother had dementia,” she tells Tech in Asia. “I was visiting her for about 10 years before she passed.”

Now 22, Zhang’s new startup is aimed at helping the same group of people – it offers an array of virtual reality therapy courses for dementia, Alzheimer’s, and stroke patients.

Jennifer Zhang, DancingMind founder and CEO / Photo credit: Jennifer Zhang

While Zhang’s grandmother was “too far gone to get traditional cognitive therapy” after multiple accidents that led to brain trauma, the Singaporean entrepreneur realized that many folks who could benefit from therapy miss out on it because of several barriers. That’s what she’s aiming to solve with DancingMind.

New therapy

The University of Oxford math and computer science graduate started her new venture in September 2018, and healthcare facilities in Singapore and the UK have begun using the VR program. DancingMind now has 15 employees – a mix of developers and support staff – across the two countries.

Zhang kicked off the business by addressing an issue in the city-state.

“I saw that there was a language barrier between foreign healthcare workers in Singapore and elderly patients who spoke a range of local dialects,” the CEO explains, referring to Vietnamese and Philippine staff running headlong into Cantonese or Hokkien.

That’s something her VR therapy content can address by giving sessions in various dialects.

Another issue worth tackling was what Zhang describes as a big gap in the supply and demand for therapy.

As she did research before starting DancingMind, Zhang felt she “really wanted to think of a way to automate this while retaining quality” and without losing “that human touch.”

The sessions are designed to work on widely available VR headsets from Facebook-owned Oculus and HTC.

It’s not just about creating content. Zhang has also come up with a patented system to capture data from headset-wearing patients. That data can be viewed by therapists to assess an individual’s progress.

DancingMind has “lump sum contracts” with 15 healthcare institutions because they prefer that arrangement to monthly subscriptions, Zhang says. The startup reckons clients get a return on their outlay within a few months as they can give more therapy sessions without spending on more therapists.

Cognitive workout

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