Akili taps new commercial chief in advance of fall marketing launch for ADHD video game therapy – Endpoints News

As Ak­ili In­ter­ac­tive preps its AD­HD video game ther­a­py for com­mer­cial launch – and builds out its new Roblox part­ner­ship – it’s tap­ping com­mer­cial vet­er­an Matt Franklin to lead the way.

Matt Franklin

Franklin will join Ak­ili lat­er this month as pres­i­dent and chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer with a fo­cus on the com­mer­cial launch and mar­ket­ing of En­deav­or­Rx, its FDA-ap­proved cog­ni­tive ther­a­py for at­ten­tion deficit hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der, lat­er this year. His du­ties in­clude over­see­ing day-to-day op­er­a­tions at Ak­ili across com­mer­cial, prod­uct, en­gi­neer­ing, med­ical and em­ploy­ee tal­ent.

Franklin was most re­cent­ly gen­er­al man­ag­er of Ex­act Sci­ences’ pre­ci­sion on­col­o­gy di­vi­sion. Be­fore that he led com­mer­cial at Thrive Ear­li­er De­tec­tion – ac­quired by Ex­act Sci­ences in 2020 – bring­ing its ear­ly de­tec­tion mul­ti-can­cer blood test to mar­ket.

Ak­ili’s En­deav­or­Rx game is ap­proved for 8-to-12-year-olds with rough­ly 25-minute 5-mis­sion ses­sions. The rac­ing game ven­tures through imag­i­nary worlds and prob­lem-solv­ing tasks de­vel­oped specif­i­cal­ly “to tar­get ar­eas of the brain that play a key role in at­ten­tion func­tion.”

Ali­ki cur­rent­ly part­ners with an on­line tele­health provider for pre­scrib­ing and doc­tors are pre­scrib­ing it in of­fice, how­ev­er the soft­ware com­pa­ny is plan­ning its full re­lease with a big mar­ket­ing push in the fall. Last year, Ak­ili launched an in­tro­duc­to­ry on­line mar­ket­ing cam­paign with re­al par­ents and kids with AD­HD who use the soft­ware.

Ed­die Mar­tuc­ci

In an­oth­er boost to its mar­ket­ing ef­forts, Ak­ili ce­ment­ed a deal with pop­u­lar ado­les­cent video gam­ing plat­form Roblox in May. The deal con­nects pa­tients’ En­deav­or­Rx treat­ment to re­wards in the Roblox vir­tu­al re­al­i­ty game, but will add new op­por­tu­ni­ties “as the part­ner­ship pi­lot con­tin­ues rolling out,” Ak­ili CEO and co-founder Ed­die Mar­tuc­ci said in an email in­ter­view.

“At Ak­ili, we’re work­ing to chal­lenge tra­di­tion­al per­cep­tions of med­i­cine, while Roblox has led its in­dus­try with the cre­ation of a vir­tu­al world that brings over 55M peo­ple to­geth­er each day through im­mer­sive shared ex­pe­ri­ences. To­geth­er, we have the abil­i­ty to com­plete­ly reimag­ine the pa­tient ex­pe­ri­ence,” he said.

En­deav­or­Rx is Ak­ili’s first prod­uct, how­ev­er, it is plan­ning and test­ing dis­ease mod­i­fy­ing dig­i­tal ther­a­pies in ma­jor de­pres­sive dis­or­der, autism spec­trum dis­or­der, mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis and Covid brain fog.


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