BrainCheck vs Linus Health
The two ends of this category's AI spectrum, and the choice is between a settled tool and a moving frontier. BrainCheck is a digitised, normed battery of established neuropsychological tests, graded C on AI centrality precisely because there is little model doing the work, but its evidence is strong and maps exactly to what it is cleared to do, and it names its CPT codes and reimbursement path openly. Linus Health is genuinely AI native: the DCTclock analyses the drawing process itself, stylus dynamics and speech acoustics with no paper equivalent, and its commercial story is predicting amyloid status, which matters because disease modifying Alzheimer's therapies require confirmed pathology. The catch on Linus is scope, since it is cleared for cognitive assessment while its headline claim is biomarker prediction, much of it still in conference abstracts. If your failure mode is a reimbursable, validated screen you can bill today, start with BrainCheck. If your failure mode is predicting who carries amyloid pathology for the treatment era, start with Linus, and confirm which claims fall inside the cleared indication.
- The reimbursement path is published: BrainCheck names the specific CPT codes, the time based minimums, and telehealth eligibility in an annually updated guide, graded A on commercial transparency where Linus publishes no pricing or code level guidance and grades C.
- Strong, settled evidence for the cleared use: a 99 participant validation reporting at least 88 percent sensitivity and specificity for dementia, an r=0.77 correlation with the MoCA, and a 529 participant multi site study, all for the cognitive assessment the product is actually cleared to perform.
- A validated battery whose scope is clearly drawn: prominently stated as not a stand alone diagnostic, graded A on autonomy, with the reimbursement and normative data as the moat rather than an algorithm whose claims are still moving.
- Genuinely AI native, not digitised: the DCTclock analyses the entire drawing process, capturing stylus dynamics and speech acoustics that have no paper equivalent, graded A on AI centrality where BrainCheck's normed battery grades C, and A on model transparency for peer reviewed method disclosure.
- The commercially important capability is biomarker prediction: peer reviewed work found the DCTclock correlated with amyloid PET in cognitively normal people and the DCR predicting PET status in the 930 participant Bio-Hermes-001 study, which addresses treatment eligibility rather than screening alone.
- The best governance posture in this sweep: the team names the cultural and educational bias failure mode directly and publishes the uncomfortable findings, including a South Asian cohort where scores fell with age and lower education, graded A.
Side-by-Side
| Axis | B BrainCheck |
L Linus Health |
|---|---|---|
| AI Centrality | ||
| Autonomy and Oversight Model | ||
| Model and Technology Transparency | ||
| Clinical and Operational Evidence | ||
| AI Safety and PHI Stewardship | ||
| HIPAA and BAA Posture | ||
| Security Certifications and Trust Center | ||
| FDA and Regulatory Status | ||
| AI Governance and Bias Disclosure | ||
| EHR and Interoperability Depth | ||
| Deployment Model and Data Residency | ||
| Commercial Transparency | ||
| Setting and Specialty Coverage |
This is the clearest AI centrality contrast in the category: BrainCheck is a digitised, normed battery graded C, Linus analyses drawing and speech behaviour with a machine learning model graded A, and this index treats the second as what a genuinely AI native cognitive assessment looks like. The trade is scope certainty. BrainCheck's strong evidence maps exactly to what it is cleared to do. Linus grades A on evidence and governance, but its cleared indication is cognitive assessment while its commercially significant claim is now amyloid and p-tau217 status prediction, a different and more consequential intended use, and much of that biomarker work appears as AAIC and CTAD conference abstracts rather than full papers, so a buyer must establish which claims fall inside the clearance. Neither publishes a security attestation or a BAA. BrainCheck runs on any tablet; Linus requires an iPad with Apple Pencil.