The Power of Patients—and A-Lab

Lynne Becker’s daughter was playing a seemingly harmless dodgeball-type game during orientation in her senior year of high school—only with a soccer ball. Near the end of the game, she was struck in the head so hard that she fell to the ground, unconscious. Not long after, she suffered a stroke.

This harrowing incident turned Becker into a full-time caregiver and then, an entrepreneur on a mission—a mission to share with others what she learned about traumatic brain injury (TBI). And ultimately, a mission to accelerate research and clinical trials. Two student teams taking MIT Sloan’s Analytics Lab (A-Lab) helped her through the early stages of her startup journey.

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The power of research

After the incident, it was clear that Becker’s daughter had a TBI, but what kind and how should it be treated? The girl, who used to be a Division I swimmer, was often catatonic, and since her heart didn’t recover, she regularly passed out. 

“She couldn’t add two plus two and forgot how to do normal things, like hold a glass,” Becker recalls. “One day, she almost set the house on fire.” 

That’s when Becker began to do what she did best—collect data, assessing and quantifying her daughter’s symptoms, so her doctors could better understand her condition. Still, it was an agonizing 18 months before they accurately diagnosed her. Meanwhile, with a background in clinical trials, Becker conducted her own research, discovering that brain injuries are understudied, underdiagnosed, and undertreated—blocking patients from the resources they need to recover. 

"That’s when I realized, I can make a difference for the over 7 million people experiencing TBI."

The power of data

In October 2020, Becker launched Power of Patients, a unique platform technology system where patients could input data about their injuries, medical symptoms, and triggers in real time. Patients could share this data with their doctors, presented in clinical charts. The doctors, in turn, were thrilled to have insights into their patients’ recovery between office visits. All the while, patients could also attend webinars on various therapeutics and clinical trials presented by subject matter experts. When 250 patients registered by mid-December, Becker knew she was onto something—but she needed help.

After completing Smart Start at the MIT Enterprise Forum, a four-week class for science and tech entrepreneurs, Becker’s database continued to grow. Soon, she had thousands of records.

“It was organic, all word of mouth. People were finding value in what we had to offer,” says Becker, but what could she assess with all this raw data? A-Lab was ready to help.

Becker had learned first-hand that doctors didn’t have a score for brain injuries, like they do for pain. How bad is it on a scale of 1 to 10 or from frowny face to smiley face? Using AI techniques, the first A-Lab team explored Becker’s data, to determine if there were any signals.

“One of the students in my first team was a surgeon, who said if she was able to see the cognitive challenges and anger in her patients earlier on, she would order cognitive behavior therapy much sooner, rather than follow the wait-and-see approach clinicians are trained to do,” Becker says. “This validated our concept and inspired me to move forward.”

Power of Patients literally puts the power of their own data in patients’ hands. Now, people can better track their own symptoms, triggers, and treatments. They can also share their data with their health care providers, which gives them more control over their own health and healing, and empowers them and their caregivers to advocate for better healthcare. Becker and her team have developed a beta version of a virtual data warehouse that researchers, policymakers, and industry professionals can use to design targeted clinical trials, fund services where patients need them most, and recruit appropriate patients for trials.But she didn’t stop there. Becker knew there was another important group she could help—athletes. 

“In the beginning, we started with the injury. What are the symptoms? How do we quantify it? Now, I wanted to know when should a coach or trainer pull an injured player off the field? Only I didn’t know anything about sports or how to reach that sector.” Becker returned to A-Lab for help. Now that she had significantly more data to analyze, Becker refined her hypothesis and asked a second A-Lab team to mathematically calculate the severity of a bump on the head. “The students incorporated a series of predictive learning algorithms, and now, we can produce an Injury Impact Severity Score (IISS)™,” says Becker. “This is the first step needed in concussion recovery and properly triaging a patient.”

“From the beginning, I’ve relied on the brilliant brains and power of MIT students to refine my business and take it to the next level,” she says. “The energy of the students was incredible. They always pushed me to stay on the cutting edge.” One of them is MIT Executive MBA alumnus Vanessa DeGennaro, EMBA ’22, who joined Power of Patients as chief technology officer in September 2024. 

The power of change

Through an A-Lab connection, Becker was recently invited to present her work at a TBI-related strategic meeting of the U.S. Department of Defense. Afterwards, a military commander came over to her. Becker says he asked, “‘With your app, can I tell if my injured soldier can pick up a gun again?’” Becker immediately said yes. The commander replied, “‘We will fund your research.’”

It’s been many years since her daughter’s incident. Her rehabilitation and recovery were riddled with ups and downs, but Becker is happy to report that her daughter finished high school and college, even winning a scholarship to graduate school. She still struggles with lingering symptoms, but she has learned to adapt to her condition, and, to Becker’s utter joy, recently got married. 

“I’m trying to change the TBI conversation,” Becker says. “Let’s all be more proactive and protective, not reactive. You only have one brain.”