EvoNexus portfolio company CARI Health has won the Golden Brain Innovation Award at the International Society of Addiction Medicine (ISAM) Global Addiction Therapeutics Innovation Day (GATID) 2026. The award was presented on September 30, 2026, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, recognizing Founder and CEO Patrik Schmidle and the CARI Health team for technology that brings personalized methadone dosing data to the point of care.
How CARI Health Won the 2026 Golden Brain Innovation Award
GATID is ISAM’s annual innovation day, held this year as the opening event of the 28th Annual Global ISAM Congress. It brings together clinicians, researchers, regulators, investors, and startups working on new approaches to treating and diagnosing addiction. Finalists earn their place through two rounds of review by ISAM leadership, first on a written abstract and then on a recorded pitch, before presenting live in front of an international audience. The Golden Brain Innovation Award is GATID’s top honor, given to the finalist with the strongest overall showing.
CARI Health finished with the highest overall score in the competition for the Golden Brain Innovation Award, judged across five criteria: innovation, scientific merit, potential impact, feasibility, and presentation quality. For a company building tools for addiction medicine, earning that result from the clinicians and scientists who lead the field is a meaningful signal that the problem it is solving is real and urgent.
Closing the Methadone Data Gap
The technology behind CARI Health’s Golden Brain Innovation Award targets a long-standing problem in addiction care. Methadone is one of the most effective treatments for opioid use disorder, but finding the right dose for each patient is harder than it looks. People metabolize methadone at very different rates. According to CARI Health, about 1 in 8 people process it slowly and about 1 in 7 process it rapidly. Without knowing which group a patient falls into, clinicians risk over- or underdosing, and 70% of clinicians surveyed by the company say they wait at least four days for lab results.
That delay matters. As fentanyl reshapes the opioid crisis, keeping patients engaged in methadone treatment has become more difficult, and getting the dose right early is one of the clearest ways to help them stay in care.
CARI Health is building a patent-pending, point-of-care system that gives clinicians accurate methadone concentration levels and metabolic ratios while the patient is still in the clinic. With that data in hand, care teams can make dosing adjustments faster and with more confidence, helping each patient reach a stable, therapeutic dose sooner and more safely.
A Mission With Personal Roots
Patrik founded CARI Health after watching a close family member struggle with opioids. Since then, he has built a team of clinicians, biochemists, and electrical engineers focused on making a lasting impact on the opioid crisis. In 2023, the company formed an advisory board of clinical, scientific, and industry experts to guide its development.
The Golden Brain Innovation Award adds to a strong base of support. CARI Health’s work has been backed by competitive grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at NIH and the National Science Foundation, along with support from MedTech Innovator, the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator, and EvoNexus San Diego.
A Win for Addiction Medicine and the EvoNexus Community
Taking home the Golden Brain Innovation Award at an international gathering of addiction medicine leaders puts CARI Health in front of exactly the people who will use its technology: the clinicians, researchers, and treatment programs working with patients every day. It also shows the kind of hard, high-impact healthcare problems EvoNexus founders are taking on, and why a Golden Brain Innovation Award for a San Diego startup matters well beyond Rotterdam.
Congratulations to Patrik and the entire CARI Health team on the Golden Brain Innovation Award. Their commitment to patients who are too often overlooked has brought the company to this moment, and the EvoNexus community is proud to support them as they work to put better data in the hands of every methadone clinician.
About CARI Health:
CARI Health is a San Diego-based health technology company that empowers clinicians to personalize methadone dosing for every patient. Its point-of-care technology delivers rapid, actionable data on methadone concentration and metabolism, so patients can reach a safe and effective dose faster. Learn more here.
About EvoNexus:
EvoNexus is California’s leading nonprofit technology startup incubator, with locations in San Diego and Irvine. Since its formation in 2010, EvoNexus has successfully built 290 companies with an exceptional survival rate of over 85%, with portfolio companies securing over $2.4B in cumulative venture funding, backed by a network of more than 400 venture capital and independent investors, and achieving 63 acquisitions alongside a successful IPO, with additional public market exits on the horizon and over $6 billion in pre-exit valuations.
Backed by an elite network of global corporate partners, including Irvine Company, Qualcomm, AMD, BAE Systems, Viasat, ResMed, LG, Murata Manufacturing, and EMD Electronics, EvoNexus continues to drive massive economic impact across Southern California’s innovation economy, culminating in a record-breaking year with $619M raised for the portfolio in 2025 alone.