• by Les Luchter , Staff Writer, November 21, 2024

Image above: Sample of a Dysolve game.

Dyslexia is a language-processing condition that affects reading, clinical linguist Dr. Coral Hoh explains to Pharma & Health Insider.

About 20% of the population has dyslexia, according to numerous sources, but Dr. Hoh points out that language-processing issues extend beyond just the overt form of reading to also encompass speaking, listening and writing.

That said, this is a major problem, with a huge potential audience for anyone who can solve -- or, should we say, “dissolve” it.

Enter Dr. Hoh’s solution: Dysolve, an AI-based gaming system aimed at “dissolving dyslexia,” per its tagline.

“If you look at the nation’s report card, two-thirds of students fail to meet reading standards,” notes Dr. Hoh, founder of Dysolve and founder/CEO of its parent company EduNational. “They cannot all be lazy. They cannot all have had poor learning environments.”

There’s also a high financial cost, she says: “Just look at your school taxes. We are collectively paying more than $100 billion a year. To let students barely get by, and then not taking care of half the students who need help with dyslexia, is not an acceptable situation.”

“Less than half of them get special education at school," a Dysolve video explains, and “about 90% of those who do get special services still read below grade level.”

On the other hand, Dysolve, which Dr. Hoh says costs “10% of what we are paying right now for each student in special ed,” has been shown to dramatically increase reading levels in clinical tests.

Earlier pilots have achieved such results as over half of middle schoolers advancing from the bottom 25% of their class to the top 20%. Dysolve is currently being evaluated independently by the University of Delaware’s Center for Research in Education & Social Policy.

"Dysolve has helped hundreds of students nationwide catch up to their grades’ reading levels in 1-2 years on average, at a fraction of the cost of states’ special education programs,” notes a PR rep for the company.

While testing continues, the product is also being sold commercially -- direct to consumers at dysolve.com and also at group rates to educators.  The audience includes adults as well as children.

Consumers subscribe to Dysolve on a monthly basis, with rates starting at $222, plus a current promotional offer of $100. That might seem high, but Dr. Hoh points out that parents can otherwise spend between $2,000 and $10,000 just to evaluate their child’s problem -- and then not even receive any follow-through.

“Why would you evaluate somebody if you’re not going to treat that person?” she asks. “What you get from evaluation should be the data that would be the blueprint for intervention. That’s just a logical way to look at it, right? But that’s not done in the field.”

But that’s the way Dysolve does it.

The platform evaluates the user, generates customized interactive verbal games, analyzes responses continually, and then generates new games based on those responses.

Behind this seemingly simple game that users play for some 15 minutes daily, lies what Dysolve calls a “massive database” that “took over 30 years of research to build.”

That also explains why AI was needed to get the platform working.

“Dyslexia can only be solved with computing because it is a computational problem involving billions and billions of brain processes,” explains the Dysolve video, saying that the system “models an individual's brain, reads and corrects it.”

“If you look at the linguistic system of the brain, it’s like some massive computer operating system,” says Dr. Hoh. While preset games that don’t change have been around for dyslexia patients since 1997, she adds, Dysolve has pantented the process “that generates single-use games for each person and for that person’s processing problem. And that’s why it’s able to correct it.”

She adds, "This is all new, to be able to generate new activities for each person in response to the person’s brain processing -- to be able to read individual brains."

Dr. Hoh says Dysolve is in a new category called “neural analysis and corrective systems.”

Dysolve solves an educational problem, not a health one, Dr. Hoh says, and thus does not need any kind of FDA approval.

But, she notes, this new catgory "is actually at the intersection of education and healthcare,” with a big source of Dysolve’s customers coming through physician referrals.

Other than those, Dysolve is largely relying on media editorial coverage to bring in users.

A 500+-page book that Dr. Hoh co-authored in 2018, titled “Dyslexia Dissolved,” has also helped.

As for Dysolve’s future growth, the sky -- or in this case, the cloud -- would seem to have no limits.

“Capacity is not an issue,” Dr. Hoh says, and while declining to give any numbers due to Dysolve’s nature as a private company, she did acknowledge that “we are making money” and also “looking for investors.

She also notes that the product’s price “is as low as we can make it. This is a very expensive program to build and to maintain.”