Helping migraine sufferers understand their headaches and alleviate pain
BioTrak Therapeutics had a very painful problem.
As a company that develops scalable behavioral approaches to stress-related medical conditions, they wanted to develop some way to help migraine sufferers reduce the frequency and debilitating effects of their headaches.
It was a tall order.
Affecting 1 in 7 people, devastatingly painful migraine headaches are the #1 cause of absenteeism in the United States. And although treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy and biofeedback have been shown to reduce headaches by up to 60%, migraine sufferers didn’t use them.
Why?
Doctors weren’t always available.
Going to a clinic every week wasn’t convenient. Plus, there is the stigma people feel about visiting a psychologist’s office.
But despite these obstacles, BioTrak’s founder and Chief Medical Officer, Pete Lillydahl, MD, was determined to solve the problem. There had to be a way to help migraine sufferers better understand their headaches and alleviate pain through proven therapies.
And BioTrak Therapeutics had an idea of what that could be.
They envisioned a first-ever mobile app that delivered clinically validated therapy for migraine sufferers via their smartphones. One that would let people input data about how they were feeling -- and then provide helpful information on how to mitigate an oncoming headache and reduce headaches in the future.