OEN NewsResilience and Relationship: Neurosom’s Long Game in Sleep, Brain Health, and Wearable Tech
Growing up in India, Viral Sheth was surrounded by business owners in his family. Entrepreneurship and problem solving were a part of daily life. Though he may not have recognized it until adulthood, Sheth was getting constant life and business lessons in working with limited resources, thinking creatively and the ups and downs of an enterprise.
“It really taught me the value of resilience and relationship,” Sheth says.
Sheth pursued a growing interest in science and technology from Mumbai to Virginia. He studied biomedical engineering, focusing his master’s program on the intersection of engineering and brain health. After completing his studies, Sheth’s first job opportunity took him to Oregon in 2004. The PNW became the foundation for his career in neurotechnology.
Sheth spent nearly 20 years building experience in the biomedical product development world, working in global business development and clinical innovation. His work has spanned North America, Europe, and Asia. “I helped companies bring and launch pioneering brain technologies in those markets, and grew a successful neurodiagnostic business,” Sheth explains.
That company was eventually acquired by Philips. Sheth landed a leadership role in the Emerging Neuro Business Unit at Philips after the acquisition, where he gained additional skills in leadership. He says the experience in building a team and thinking strategically about market fit and commercial partnerships laid the groundwork for what came next. As he realized he wanted to move beyond business development, a new idea presented itself.
Neurosom was born from a simple, but powerful, insight into brain health that Sheth had seen in action over the course of his career. “Sleep is one of the most overlooked drivers of long-term brain health,” he says. “Yet we’ve known for years that deep sleep is essential for memory, emotional resilience, and clearing neurotoxins from the brain.”
Harmful toxins in the brain get cleared through the glymphatic system when things are working as they should. But when things get off track due to lack of sleep or poor rest quality, those toxins accumulate and are linked to health issues like dementia. Sheth knew most sleep systems and products on the market today are focused on tracking your sleep or providing an intervention in a way that’s not individualized. For example, CPAP machines for sleep apnea do adjust to a person’s breathing patterns, but don’t address individual brain activity or sleep itself.
“The Neurosom founding team is a group of pioneers in the neurotech and neuromodulation spaces,” Sheth says. “We saw an opportunity to build something more than just a medical device company focused on health.”
Founded in 2021, Neurosom aims to build a precision brain health platform to support healthy aging and cognitive resilience. The FDA-cleared Neurosom EEG Assessment Technology (NEAT) is a machine learning algorithm designed to power the therapeutic solutions Neurosom is developing. The company’s flagship product, Sleep WISP, is a wearable headband that tracks users’ sleep cycles and intervenes at precisely the right time based on individual clinical grade brain signals (EEG) every single night. NEAT powers the Sleep WISP, and can note when users are asleep, transitioning to deeper stages of sleep, and quality of sleep throughout. WISP’s EEG/tES produces gentle electrical stimulation in real time based on the individual user’s needs, promoting deeper—and less fragmented sleep.
While Sheth sees a future where everyone could utilize WISP as a preventative, he’s applying an important lesson from his time at Philips to Neurosom: focus. “Philips taught me to remain focused and not try to solve everything at the outset,” he says. “Sleep is so integral to many neurological and neuropsychiatric conditions and ultimately Sleep WISP will be a platform technology. But first, we’re tackling dementia.”
The Neurosom team is differentiating from other wearable health tech companies by building a precision brain health platform rather than a standalone device. The company’s approach begins with advanced brain health assessment using high density EEG (HD EEG) and Sleep WISP technologies to characterize an individual’s sleep physiology, glymphatic clearance capacity, brain function, and cognitive risk factors. These measurements help identify patients who may benefit most from intervention, predict future risk, and personalize therapy.
“Many wearable health companies focus primarily on tracking metrics,” Sheth says. “Our goal is to create a precision brain health flywheel that starts with diagnosis, informs prediction, enables personalized intervention, and continuously learns from longitudinal data. We believe that closed closed-loop approach is what ultimately differentiates Neurosom from traditional sleep and wellness technologies.”
Neurosom is pursuing this strategy through a clinical development pathway initially focused on dementia risk reduction. This pathway has challenges, Sheth says: “The runway is long, and funding can be a hurdle when you’re not initially generating much revenue.”
Neurosom has already secured funding from the National Institute on Aging to support an ongoing clinical study evaluating the impact of its technology on sleep and cognition in patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment, often a precursor to dementia.
“Once we have the right data to prove our therapy is preventative in the dementia context, we move on to additional applications like Parkinson’s, depression, and even menopause,” Sheth says. “Sleep impacts all of these.”
The company is already seeing interest from leading researchers in adjacent indications. Two key opinion leader collaborators are currently planning investigator-initiated studies evaluating Neurosom’s technology in Parkinson’s disease and depression.
Oregon has proven to be a quality homebase for Neurosom’s work. Being able to tap expertise at institutions like OHSU, OSU and the University of Oregon has been critical, Sheth says. “We’re excited about the talent pool here,” he says. “There’s also a thriving and collaborative entrepreneur ecosystem in this field, and the community has been invaluable.”
While building Neurosom’s offerings, Sheth has frequently leaned on those early lessons about resilience and relationship. It’s not just about business for the Neurosom team; for Sheth, meaning comes from the company’s goal to improve lives and longevity. Through communities and organizations such as OEN, ONAMI, and Portland Seed Fund (PSF), Neurosom has found mentorship, validation, support, and new funding opportunities.
One particularly meaningful milestone came in Dec 2025, when Neurosom was selected as the winner of the Angel Oregon BioScience Investment competition following months of due diligence and review. For Sheth and the Neuro team, the experience provided more than recognition. “The process helped sharpen our focus, strengthen our story, and build confidence in what we’re creating. Importantly, it also reinforced that we have a strong community behind us,” Sheth says.
Sheth is particularly proud of the founding team. Collectively, they’ve spent decades learning what matters in brain health and medical technology, and Neurosom’s offerings are the pay off.
“We’ve made an incredible amount of progress with very limited resources,” he says. “I believe we can scale new heights in the years ahead.”
Produced by A.wordsmith for OEN
