At only 42 years old, Jon Corkey was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease, a form of dementia. Though he knew he needed to focus on his own health, in the back of his mind, he thought only of children. “I saw that my children could now potentially develop Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s or some kind of brain cognitive health issues. I saw a gap in [care and research], and an opportunity. So I’m on this journey to work with researchers to figure out how we can improve care and research,” he explains.
Fueled by this mission, he founded Amissa Health. “We saw a tremendous opportunity to improve the lives of people with dementia, to improve their safety, to improve the stress and burden for caregivers, and also an opportunity to improve the collection of data to advance research, behavioral research, and intervention research to prevent dementia and Alzheimer’s disease,” says Jon.
Jon is a veteran, and received his diagnosis just before he was to move to Australia for his final PCS in the military. After medically retiring from the Navy, he spent two years doing customer discovery to find the gaps in care. He met with hundreds of caregivers and medical professionals to fully understand the problems before building a platform, funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Jon was selected to be one of the nine Semi-Finalists at the Military Entrepreneur Challenge in Austin, TX, in March 2023. He walked away with a $1,000 grant that he plans to use for Amissa’s payroll to continue operation, research, and growth.
