Houston innovator launches holistic health and cognitive care app

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The myAvos app has been designed by behavioral health scientists to set users up for long, healthy lives. Photo via Canva

Meet Laura. She’s not human, but she could be the key to your aging healthfully. She’s the digital wellness coach on myAvos, a groundbreaking app that launched this week from OptiChroniX.

Now meet Le Dam, the woman behind the app. Dam is a medical doctor, as well as CEO and co-founder of OptiChroniX. While practicing medicine in her birthplace of Australia, Dam realized that her life of prescribing medications to patients who were already sick was not how she had envisioned helping people. She knew that prevention, using the five pillars of healthy aging — nutrition, activity, sleep, health, and stress — was the way to keep patients fit and happy into their golden years.

She returned to California, where she lived after leaving Houston as a youth, to work at a startup with the goal of one day heading a company of her own. She met Swiss-based COO and co-founder, Rene Gilvert, on LinkedIn.

“He was looking for a medical doctor to join his startup,” Dam recalls. “We were so well aligned that we decided to join forces.” Now, the team works remotely in locations ranging from Dam’s home in Houston to Portugal.

When the pandemic happened, Dam took the opportunity to leave the Silicon Valley and work remotely from Houston, a return that she says was always her end goal.

“I always knew that I wanted to build my business in Houston,” Dam says, mentioning the assets of the world’s largest medical center, a thriving startup community, and diverse population for whom she wants to build her technology.

myAvos pairs with a user’s smart watch and harnesses their health information such as physical activity and hours slept. The user can also input additional information such as blood test results and meals eaten. The app analyzes the information provided and assesses the user’s risk for chronic illness later in life. From there, Laura coaches them on what changes they can make to live healthier lifestyles. The app even reminds users when to take their medications and shares information with designated caregivers.

The myAvos app has a comprehensive approach to health. Screenshots via avos.health

The app has been designed by behavioral health scientists to understand why you’re not exercising enough or eating right and can offer personalized motivations to get users off the couch.

Right now, the focus is on potential dementia and cognitive impairment, says Dam, but in the future, myAvos will more holistically target all preventable chronic illnesses. But dementia is one of the major causes of disability among older people around the world and people living with it is expected to triple by 2050.

“If we can empower people with health literacy, we really believe we can prevent chronic disease,” says Dam. “Forty percent of dementia is preventable. A lot of these chronic diseases are preventable. Even diabetes can be reversible.”

And she points out that the changes that can be made to help cognitive health can affect other systems as well.

“We really want to empower the individuals,” Dam says. “If we can empower people with health literacy, we really believe we can prevent chronic disease.”

And myAvos is the key. The app is based on a subscription model, allowing users full access to a risk calculator, monthly cognitive assessments, personalized lifestyle guidance, and even fun brain games to keep them sharp. It may turn out that a visit with Laura a day will keep the doctor away long into your later years.

Le Dam moved from California to Houston to build her company. Photo via LinkedIn

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UH lands $11.8M for first-of-its-kind early language development study

speech funding

Researchers at the University of Houston have secured an $11.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a first-of-its-kind study of early language development.

Led by Elena Grigorenko, the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Psychology, and research professor Jack Fletcher, the study will follow 3,600 children aged 18 to 24 months to uncover how language skills develop at this critical stage and why some children experience delays that can influence later growth.

The NIH funding will also support the development of the new national Clinical Research Center on Developmental Language Disorders at UH, which aims to bring experts from psychology, education, health and measurement sciences to study how children learn language.

“This will be the first national study to estimate how common late talking is using a large, representative sample of Houston toddlers,” Grigorenko said in a news release. “By following these children as they grow, we hope to better understand the developmental pathways that can lead to conditions such as developmental language disorder and autism.”

UH’s team will partner with the pediatric clinic network at Texas Children’s Hospital, where children will be screened for early language development, allowing researchers to identify those who show signs of delayed speech. Next, researchers will follow the cohort through early childhood to examine how language abilities evolve and how early delays may lead to later challenges.

The Clinical Research Center on Developmental Language Disorders will be the 14th national research center established at UH, and will include researchers from multiple UH departments, as well as partners at Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Center for Learning Disorders.

“This level of investment from the National Institutes of Health reflects the significance of this work to address a complex challenge affecting children, families and communities,” Claudia Neuhauser, vice president for research at UH, said in a news release. “By bringing together experts from multiple disciplines and partnering with major health systems across the region, the project reflects our commitment to advancing discoveries that impact our community.”

Rice Alliance names Houston healthtech exec as first head of platform

new hire

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship has named its first head of platform.

Houston entrepreneur Laura Neder stepped into the newly created role last month, according to an email from Rice Alliance. Neder will focus on building and growing Houston’s Venture Advantage Platform.

The emerging platform, which is being promoted by Rice Alliance and the Ion, aims to connect founders with the "people, capital and expertise they need to scale."

"I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it takes to make an innovation ecosystem more navigable, more connected, and more useful for founders," Neder said in a LinkedIn post. "I’m grateful for the opportunity to do that work at Rice Alliance, alongside a team with a long history of supporting entrepreneurship and innovation."

"Houston has the talent, institutions, and industry base to create real advantage for founders," she added. "I’m looking forward to listening, learning, and building stronger pathways across the ecosystem."

Neder most recently served as CEO of Houston-based Careset, where she helped bring the Medicare data startup to commercialization. Prior to that, Neder served as COO of Houston-based telemedicine startup 2nd.MD, which was acquired for $460 million by Accolade in 2021.

"Laura brings a rare combination of founder empathy, operational experience and ecosystem leadership," Rice Alliance shared.

Neder and Rice Alliance also shared that the organization is hiring developers to design the new Venture Advantage Platform. Learn more here.

Elon Musk's SpaceX files initial paperwork to sell shares to the public

Incoming IPO

Elon Musk's space exploration company has filed preliminary paperwork to sell shares to the public, according to two sources familiar with the filing, a blockbuster offering that would likely rank as the biggest ever and could make its founder the world's first trillionaire.

A SpaceX IPO promises to be one of the biggest Wall Street events of the year, with several investment banks lining up to help raise tens of billions to fund Musk's ambitions to set up a base on the moon, put datacenters the size of several football fields in orbit and possibly one day send a man to Mars.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the confidential registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SpaceX did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Exactly how much SpaceX plans to raise has not been disclosed but the figure is reportedly as much as $75 billion. At that level, the offering would easily eclipse the $29 billion that Saudi Aramco raised in its IPO in 2019.

The offering, coming possibly in June, could value all the shares of SpaceX at $1.5 trillion, nearly double what the company was valued in December when some minority owners sold their stakes, according to research firm Pitchbook, before an acquisition that increased its size.

Musk owns 42% of the SpaceX now, according to Pitchbook, though that figure will change with the IPO when new owners are issued shares. In any case, he is likely to pierce the trillion dollar mark because he is already close. Forbes magazine estimates Musk's net worth at roughly $823 billion.

In addition to making reusable rockets to hurl astronauts and hardware into orbit, SpaceX owns Starlink, the world’s largest satellite communications company. The company also recently brought under its roof two other Musk businesses, social media platform X, formerly Twitter, and artificial intelligence business, xAI, in a controversial transaction because both the seller and the buyer were controlled by him.

SpaceX has become the biggest commercial launch company in its industry, responsible for sending payloads into orbit for customers across the globe, but has also benefited from big taxpayer spending. That has raised conflicts of interest issues given that Musk was the biggest donor to President Donald Trump's campaign and is still a big backer.

In the past five years, SpaceX won $6 billion in contracts from NASA, the Defense Department and other U.S. government agencies, according to USAspending.gov.

Among current SpaceX owners is Donald Trump Jr, the president's oldest son. He owns a shares through 1789 Capital. That venture capital firm made him a partner shortly after his father won the presidency for a second time and has been buying up federal contractors seeking to win taxpayer money ever since.

The White House and Trump himself have repeatedly denied there are any conflicts of interest between his role as president and his family's businesses.

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