Yicheng Sun
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Together Senior Health

Early Dementia Diagnosis and Treatment Platform

Half of people with dementia are undiagnosed. Two phases of product design shifted a cognitive-health platform toward helping more people reach diagnosis and care.

22Primary care providers engaged
13Care settings represented
15MAmericans living with MCI
My role
Design lead · Product lead
Timeline
2021–2023 · IRB-approved, HIPAA-compliant research and product design
  • Jul 2024Together Senior Health acquired by Linus Health
  • Jul 2026Brain Health Together pilot study published in BMC Digital Health
Status
Live
People
  • ~12 people per phase across product, design, research, and engineering, with a physician for clinical framing
  • C-suite partners: TSH's CEO, chief science officer (the UCSF professor behind eRADAR), and VP of product
  • Research network: 22 primary care providers across 13 care settings; UCSF and the California Department of Public Health as partners
“How to talk to your doctor” — the caregiver conversation kit
Moving Together — the MCI program home experience
Personalized brain-health resources, matched by coach

The challenge

Together Senior Health had a research-backed online movement and social program for people with cognitive decline. The first brief was to adapt that experience for the larger mild cognitive impairment population. Research exposed a more fundamental barrier: half of people with dementia are undiagnosed, so they cannot enter the pathway where a program or platform can help them at all.

My contribution

I led interaction and product design in the first stage, then returned as product lead for work focused on the diagnosis pathway. The program combined patient and care-partner research with 22 primary-care providers across 13 California settings.

Across both phases, I connected near-term product delivery to a broader strategy:

  • Designed high-fidelity MCI program flows and a Now/Near/Further roadmap that supported product planning and an SBIR grant application.
  • Identified that screening happened more often when patients or families raised the concern, shifting the strategy from provider-initiated to patient-initiated tools.
  • Prioritized two opportunities with Together’s CEO, chief science officer, and VP of product rather than spreading resources across four possible directions.
  • Prototyped a Dementia 360 course, provider quick-reference, and Healthy Aging Kit with conversation and self-reflection tools families could bring into an appointment.

The impact

The diagnosis-first strategy redirected the portfolio toward the estimated 15 million Americans living with MCI. Together Senior Health used the roadmap in grant planning, continued the research through a partnership with the California Department of Public Health, and carried the patient-initiated framing into subsequent work.

Linus Health acquired Together Senior Health in 2024, including its cognitive-risk capabilities. In 2026, UCSF researchers published the Brain Health Together pilot study, informed in part by the research across these phases. The strategy remained useful beyond the original product brief, the project team, and a later change in the company’s ownership and direction.