Meron Gribetz has spent much of his career asking how technology can become a more natural part of human life. His work has taken him from augmented reality to neurotechnology, but the question at its heart remains remarkably consistent: Can technology adapt to people, rather than asking people to adapt to it?
As founder and CEO of Inner Cosmos, Gribetz is now exploring that question in the field of mental health. The company is developing an implantable neurostimulation device it calls the “Digital Pill,” designed to help people with treatment-resistant depression. Behind this ambition is not only a fascination with technology, but a personal experience that led him to think differently about what treatment can—and should—offer.
A personal experience behind the mission
Gribetz was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 10 and began taking Ritalin. As he told ColombiaOne, the medication helped him academically, but the experience also raised questions for him about its effects on his social life and sense of well-being. It left him thinking about how treatment might help people feel better without taking something else away from them.
That question became part of the motivation behind Inner Cosmos. The company’s Digital Pill is designed to stimulate brain circuits associated with depression. It combines an implanted device with external technology intended to support treatment at home and allow a patient’s care team to follow their progress. The goal is to explore another option for people who have not found enough relief through existing treatments.
The device remains under clinical evaluation. Its potential benefits, safety and place in depression care will need to be established through further research. For Gribetz, the challenge is to bring an ambitious technological idea into a field where people’s health, trust and daily lives are at stake.
From a more natural interface to the brain
Before turning to mental health, Gribetz worked on augmented reality and new ways for people to interact with computers. In his 2016 TED talk, he recalled a conversation that lost its energy when a friend looked down at a phone. The moment made him question whether technology was helping people connect with the world around them or pulling their attention away from it.
His idea of a “natural machine” imagines technology that works with the ways people already think, move and perceive. Augmented reality, in this view, should add useful information to the physical world without overwhelming it or replacing human interaction. The point is not simply to make computers more powerful, but to make them feel more intuitive and more closely connected to human experience.
That vision offers a way to understand the shift from augmented reality to neurotechnology. Both fields ask how digital tools can work in harmony with the human mind. With Inner Cosmos, the question moves inward: rather than changing how people interact with information around them, can technology help researchers develop new ways to treat conditions that affect how people feel and function?
Turning possibility into care
The Digital Pill raises questions that go beyond how the device works. What do clinical studies show? Who might benefit from this approach? How can patients’ safety, privacy and control remain central as the technology develops? These questions matter especially in mental health, where people may be searching for hope after other treatments have not worked.
For Gribetz, the promise of technology ultimately rests on its effect on people’s lives. Improvement might mean being able to reconnect with family, return to an activity or imagine a future that once felt out of reach. The Digital Pill is still being studied, but its underlying ambition is clear: to explore whether innovation can expand the options available to people living with depression.
In his conversation with ColombiaOne, Gribetz connects a personal experience with a broader vision of technology, one that seeks not just to change what machines can do, but to help people regain possibilities in their own lives.