2025-03-17
We have interviewed Kim Baden-Kristensen, CEO of Brain+. Kim shares insights into the company’s operations, strategy, and future outlook. He also provides his perspective on the digital healthcare market and the key factors investors should keep an eye on in the coming years.
Can you briefly describe Brain+ and its business operations?
Brain+ is a health technology company dedicated to transforming dementia care by enabling Health and Care Providers to deliver best-in-class, scalable solutions and help people affected by dementia live better lives. Our team of health technology experts, PhDs, and neuroscientists is pioneering Ayla, the world’s first scalable digital dementia care platform. As part of this innovation, we have launched Ayla – Your CST Assistant, the world’s first platform software as a medical device for the delivery of high-quality and scalable Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) in Denmark in July 2024 and in the UK in October 2024. CST is the world’s leading non-drug therapy for dementia, endorsed in 39 countries and clinically proven to slow cognitive decline by 4-6 months in people with mild to moderate dementia—who represent 85% of all cases. Ayla – Your CST Assistant empowers healthcare professionals to deliver CST more effectively, and in the UK ensuring compliance with NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) recommendations for delivery of the therapy. By making dementia therapy easier, more effective, and scalable, Brain+ is at the forefront of digital innovation in dementia care.
What is your current customer acquisition strategy, and how do you see your revenue model evolving?
In the UK, CST is commissioned through NHS Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and delivered in Memory Assessment Units, private care homes, and community settings. Our go-to-market strategy targets these key areas, where we’ve built a strong pipeline and secured significant interest.
Ayla – Your CST Assistant operates on a scalable, license-based model with an annual site fee, including CST training for one healthcare professional. Adoption is seamless, with onboarding and training completed in just one day.
Denmark, our home market, differs from the UK in that CST is municipality-led without national recommendations. Despite this, we’ve gained strong traction, securing contracts with five municipalities (one already extended) and collaborating with five others on a grant-funded CST scaling project.
With our UK pipeline expected to convert into revenue imminently, we anticipate exponential growth through 2025, targeting operational cash flow break-even by mid-2026. As adoption increases, we are evolving our revenue model to accelerate CST scaling across NHS and care providers. Future opportunities include integration into broader dementia care pathways and international expansion into markets where CST is already recognized as a gold-standard therapy.
In what ways does Ayla stand out from other digital therapy solutions, and what is your vision for its future development?
Ayla – Your CST Assistant is the only certified medical device for Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) globally, making it a unique and pioneering solution in digital dementia care. Unlike other digital therapy solutions, the product is specifically designed for therapists, empowering them to deliver CST in a compliant, efficient, and scalable way. CST is the only non-drug dementia therapy recommended by NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) in the UK and is also endorsed by policymakers for global implementation.
However, patient access to CST has traditionally been limited due to resource constraints in the care sector. With our first product, we can help overcome this challenge by digitizing and simplifying CST delivery, allowing healthcare professionals to provide high-quality therapy at scale while maintaining clinical compliance and effectiveness. Our vision is to evolve Ayla to include several dementia care products and become the gold standard platform for effective dementia care and management. We plan to allocate more ressources to complete the development of the exciting new opportunities in our pipeline of Ayla products after this year of consolidating our commercial traction and hitting our target.
What are the key metrics investors should track to measure the company’s success?
Investors should track our sales pipeline metrics including number of both UK private care home sites and NHS ICBs engaged and obviously the closing of sales contracts as key growth indicators. Contract renewal rates, which we start to see materialise slowly in Denmark as a highly convincing sign, and Operating Cash Flow are also critical metrics, ensuring long-term sustainability.
Currently, brand awareness in the UK and broader CST market adoption are key focus areas, driving visibility and demand for our offering. To accelerate this, we have engaged a leading UK Health and Care marketing expert to strengthen our presence and impact. These metrics collectively reflect our progress toward sustainable revenue growth.
How has the response been from healthcare professionals and patients using your products?
The response to Ayla – your CST Assistant has been overwhelmingly positive from both healthcare professionals and patients. In Denmark, where we introduced a pilot version of the product about two years ago, Ayla has been praised for standardizing and enhancing CST delivery with its ease of use and quick onboarding, reducing preparation time and providing valuable support to CST therapists. A UK usability study by Age UK found that therapy preparation time was reduced by 50%, 100% of participants found the CST sessions provided by Ayla – Your CST Assistant engaging, and 100% of facilitators and participants were satisfied with the product’s usability and clinical relevance. Facilitators also highlighted that it simplifies session planning and is easy to navigate. In the UK, particularly in care homes, customer feedback has been highly positive, recognizing Ayla – Your CST Assistant’s ability to add value, efficiency, and differentiation.
Are there any plans to expand Brain+ technology beyond dementia to other neurodegenerative diseases?
Our aim is to build Ayla, the world’s first scalable dementia care platform. We are solving one of the world’s leading health and social care challenges that is growing 3x in incidence and 8x in cost over the next 20 years. Dementia is the second leading cause of death globally and the leading cause of death in women. We exist because we want to give time and quality of life back to families, care givers and those with lived and living experience of dementia or early symptoms of dementia to focus our efforts on dementia to truly create a solution that can change lives.
Also, it is a well-documented fact in relation to dementia that the earlier therapeutic interventions to stimulate cognition is offered the higher the effect and benefits to both people affected by the condition and healthcare systems. Therefore, it would be obvious for us in the future to look at the even larger population of people with Mild Cognitive Impairment which have a high risk of developing dementia. To this effect, we have very early-stage technologies in development targeting MCI.
Lastly, where do you see Brain+ in three years, and why do you believe Brain+ is a good investment?
In three years, Brain+ will be the market leader in dementia care management within the UK health and care sector, recognised as a household name for effective support to help people affected by dementia live better lives. There are about 16,000 care home sites in the UK today, of which approximately 10,000 offer dementia care. Being second to none in our offering and already building a presence and a customer pipeline, we are on track to cover a targeted 300 sites by end 2025 and scale to our presence to 1,500+ care home sites in the years to come, corresponding to Annual Recurring Revenues (ARR) of €3 million – or around DKK 22-24 million —a significant step in capturing the £5 billion UK dementia care market. Our expansion into other territories; APAC, USA and other major markets will unlock even greater growth potential, capitalizing on the global demand for scalable, non-drug dementia therapies. With Ayla – Your CST Assistant already validated by healthcare professionals and CST adoption growing worldwide, we are positioned to dominate an untapped market with a first-mover advantage. Investors have a unique opportunity to be part of a high-growth, impact-driven company revolutionizing dementia care at scale. Now is the time to invest in the future of digital dementia therapy for the benefit of people with dementia, representing an area of extremely high unmet needs.
We thank Kim Baden-Kristensen for the interview and wish the company all the best moving forward.
Disclaimer:
This is an interview that has been done on behalf of the company. Impala Nordic and/or people behind Impala Nordic are guarantors in the company's ongoing rights issue. // Detta är en intervju som har gjorts på uppdrag av bolaget. Impala Nordic och/eller personer bakom Impala Nordic är garanter i bolagets pågående företrädesemission.