Health Europa – Introducing a Novel Brain Activity Monitor
Neurosteer has developed a three-electrode neurological monitor that provides multiple brain activity biomarkers.
Neurosteer has the mission to improve the quality of brain disorder care by creating meaningful and easy-to-use brain activity measures that provide immediate neurofeedback as well as general brain activity assessment. The company produces high-level brain activity biomarkers in real time which enable treatment improvement by affordable and continuous monitoring of neural activity.
The mobile monitor can be used next to a hospital bed or at home and provides assessment and monitoring, with real-time alerts.
The Activity of the Brain
Automatic and accurate brain monitoring is key for optimised treatment both in the clinic and at home. For example, in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), it can help prevent secondary trauma due to epilepsy or oedema, and in the operating room, it can reduce post-operative cognitive decline. Similarly, monitoring of home-care patients can indicate drug compliance and effectiveness, and provide a general indication of neural activity without the presence of a neurologist.
The current focus of Neurosteer is neurodegenerative diseases and mood disorders, as well as various forms of epilepsy, and the main effort is devoted to assisting with drug development and neurostimulation optimisation. For clinical trials and preventive medicine, Neurosteer can provide affordable patient screening and monitoring as well as quantification of the response to neurological and psychiatric drugs.
The system uses proprietary, real-time algorithms which run on the cloud and produce biomarkers that can be read using any web interface. The biomarkers are associated with various forms of cognitive load, emotional states, stress, pain, abnormal (epileptic) activity, disorders of consciousness, sleep stages and level of anaesthesia. Importantly, the biomarkers do not require electroencephalography (EEG) expert interpretation, thereby saving time and reducing costs. Objective statistics, trends and historical data are available for a single patient or a group of patients. The historical data can be easily integrated with other analytics tools used for better trial management.
About Neurosteer
Neurosteer’s core technology was developed at Tel Aviv University, Israel, by co-founder and CEO Nathan Intrator. Intrator received a PhD in applied mathematics from Brown University, US, and is a professor (on leave) of computer science and neuroscience at Tel Aviv University. He studied the signal-processing capabilities of sonar animals and developed signal-processing methods for brain activity interpretation and brain-computer interfaces, most notably for extensive information extraction from a single EEG channel. Neurosteer commercialises this technology to provide mobile brain analysis with medical and wellness applications.
Neurosteer has already helped a number of patients and their families – specifically, assisting caregivers in their assessment and providing a clear response to physical and other stimulation. In addition, the system is being used for assessment of Parkinson’s disease and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients. Moreover, the system provides indication of the response to transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and deep brain stimulation (DBS).
