After many months of work (and we hope many new neu­rons and stronger synapses in our brains), we have just released our inau­gural report on the emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket, the first to define the brain fit­ness and train­ing soft­ware mar­ket and ana­lyze the size and trends of its four cus­tomer seg­ments. We esti­mate the size of the US brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket at $225M in2007, up from $100m in 2005 (50% CAGR). The two seg­ments that fueled the mar­ket growth: con­sumers (grew from $5m to $80m, 300% CAGR) and health­care & insur­ance providers (grew from $36m to $65m, 35% CAGR).

High­lights from The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 report include:

1) 2007 was a sem­i­nal year for the US Brain Fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket, which reached $225 mil­lion in rev­enues – up from an esti­mated $100 mil­lion in 2005.

2) Over 20 com­pa­nies are offer­ing tools to assess and train cog­ni­tive skills to four cus­tomer seg­ments: con­sumers; health­care and insur­ance providers; K12 school sys­tems; and For­tune 1000 com­pa­nies, the mil­i­tary, and sports teams.

3) The Nin­tendo Brain Age/ Brain Train­ing phe­nom­e­non has dri­ven much of the growth. The con­sumer seg­ment grew from a few mil­lion in 2005 to an esti­mated $80 mil­lion in 2007.

4) There is major con­fu­sion in the mar­ket, so edu­ca­tion will be key. Users and buy­ers need help to nav­i­gate the maze of prod­ucts and claims.

5) Over 400 res­i­den­tial facil­i­ties for older adults have launched com­put­er­ized “brain fit­ness cen­ters.” Sales to the health­care and insur­ance provider seg­ment grew from $35 mil­lion in 2005 to an esti­mated $65 mil­lion in 2007.

6) More than five pro­grams have shown results in ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­als. Cog­ni­tive func­tions that can be trained include: visual and audi­tory pro­cess­ing, work­ing mem­ory, atten­tion, and decision-making.

7) A prod­uct has obtained 510(k) FDA clear­ance for reha­bil­i­ta­tion of stroke and Trau­matic Brain Injury patients. Another prod­uct is being used by a grow­ing net­work of ADHD specialists.

Large-scale, fully-automated cog­ni­tive assess­ments are being used in a grow­ing num­ber of clin­i­cal tri­als. This opens the way for the devel­op­ment of inex­pen­sive consumer-facing, base­line cog­ni­tive assessments.

9) The poten­tial for K12 Edu­ca­tion remains largely untapped due to lim­ited research link­ing cog­ni­tive train­ing to aca­d­e­mic performance.

10) Com­pa­nies, sports teams and the mil­i­tary are find­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve pro­duc­tiv­ity. The aging work­force will make this a must.

The report tracks devel­op­ments at over 20 pub­lic and pri­vate com­pa­nies offer­ing tools to assess and train brain func­tions and pro­vides impor­tant indus­try data, insights and analy­sis to help investors, exec­u­tives, entre­pre­neurs, and pol­icy mak­ers nav­i­gate the oppor­tu­ni­ties and risks of this rapidly grow­ing mar­ket. The report dis­cusses the impli­ca­tions of cog­ni­tive sci­ence on healthy aging and a num­ber of dis­or­ders such as atten­tion deficits, dyslexia, stroke and trau­matic brain injury, schiz­o­phre­nia, autism, mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, and Alzheimer’s dis­ease. The report also pro­vides infor­ma­tion and frame­works to help insti­tu­tional buy­ers make informed pur­chase deci­sions about brain fit­ness programs.

Table of Con­tents
List of Fig­ures
Com­pa­nies Included
End Notes

A few acco­lades for the report:

“Finally, an insight­ful and com­plete overview of the sci­ence, com­pa­nies and trends in the brain fit­ness field. A must-read for every­one offer­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices to boomers and elders.“
– Glo­ria Cavanaugh, for­mer Pres­i­dent & CEO of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging and found­ing Board mem­ber of the National Alliance for Caregiving.

“This ground­break­ing report pro­vides a defin­i­tive overview of the emerg­ing brain train­ing mar­ket — an impor­tant cat­e­gory to watch for every gam­ing and health­care exec­u­tive and investor. Sharp­Brains’ com­pre­hen­sive report defines a clear scope for the mar­ket and also charts its evo­lu­tion, path and key trends.“
– Tim Chang, Prin­ci­pal at Nor­west Ven­ture Partners.

“Brain health and func­tion is becom­ing a top pri­or­ity in our soci­ety. This is as true for school chil­dren as it is for cor­po­rate exec­u­tives or aging baby-boomers. It is a typ­i­cal mis­con­cep­tion about the brain that there is only one gen­eral intel­li­gence to care about. It has been shown that there are many dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties each of which may be trained sys­tem­at­i­cally. While phys­i­cal exer­cise increases the rate of for­ma­tion of new nerve cells, men­tal exer­cise pro­motes their sur­vival. It is in this con­text that an explo­sion of new “brain-training” soft­ware modal­i­ties have been devel­oped.
The 2008 State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket report is a timely analy­sis of the sta­tus of this new and emerg­ing mar­ket. Pre­lim­i­nary results from sci­en­tific inves­ti­ga­tions eval­u­at­ing sev­eral of the pro­grams sug­gest not only short-term improve­ment in the trained skills, but a more long last­ing and extended response span­ning related men­tal func­tions. The review clearly states that the impact of men­tal train­ing on brain aging and dement­ing dis­or­ders remains unknown, but it pro­files each approach regard­ing degree of sci­en­tific scrutiny, mar­ket seg­ment, modal­ity, and spe­cific para­me­ter being trained. Health­care and psy­chol­ogy pro­fes­sion­als will ben­e­fit immensely from this state of the art, com­pre­hen­sive overview and insight­ful analy­sis.“
- Larry McCleary, M. D., for­mer act­ing Chief of Pedi­atric Neu­ro­surgery at Den­ver Children’s Hospital.

The report is avail­able either in elec­tronic for­mat or hard­copy, both priced at $495. To learn more, and pur­chase, click Here. We are offer­ing a 10% dis­count to our blog read­ers in honor of Brain Aware­ness Week (Dis­count Code “BAW2008”), valid until March 20th.

Related infor­ma­tion:

- We first announced this report in this MIT/ ASA/ Smart­Sil­vers Panel

- The video of the entire 1.5 hour panel is avail­able in Google Video.

- This post fea­tured the main high­lights of the event.

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