Exeter spin-out secures near £900,000 funding boost
An innovative University of Exeter spin-out company, which uses sophisticated mathematical modelling to help develop treatment plans for patients with epilepsy, has secured two prestigious government funding awards
Neuronostics has received two grants worth almost £900,000 in total, as part of a £50M package of support for artificial intelligence in health and care by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), announced today (September 8th 2020).
The awards will enable the Neuronostics team to develop their patented BioEP technology - a revolutionary biomarker of the susceptibility to seizures in the human brain, informed by clinical EEG recordings - for both clinical and at-home use.
The first grant award, of £720,000, will enable the company and academic and clinical partners from the Universities of Exeter and Birmingham to build a prototype clinical platform, that uses mathematical models to provide a risk score of epilepsy using clinical EEG recordings.
In contrast to current clinical practice, where multiple recordings over many months are often needed to confirm a diagnosis of epilepsy, BioEP reveals the risk of epilepsy from the first recorded EEG with the same level of accuracy.
The second award, for £150,000 will support the development of a smart-phone app, capable of receiving data from a wireless EEG headset.
On board algorithms will extract relevant data segments which will be sent to Neuronostics cloud-based platform for analysis. The company believes this analysis will help clinicians understand whether a person with epilepsy is responding effectively to their medication.
Professor John Terry, co-founder of Neuronostics and Interdisciplinary Professorial Fellow at the University of Birmingham, said: “I’m delighted that we have secured these two awards. They will enable us to accelerate our product development, and importantly to clinically validate the performance of the BioEP seizure risk score.”
Dr Rohit Shankar, Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School, said: “At present epilepsy is a condition that is difficult to diagnose and hard to treat. BioEP is an exciting technology that could greatly improve how we diagnose and manage the condition. I am looking forward to contributing to the clinical validation of this technology.”
Dr Neil Hayes, Assistant Director, Innovation, Impact and Business at the University of Exeter said: “We are pleased to see the progress being made by University of Exeter spin-out company Neuronostics Ltd.
“These awards will help deliver an important milestone for the company and the BioEP technology, moving it closer to the point where it can directly benefit healthcare outcomes. Neuronostics is an excellent example of how the University translates its AI research into real world solutions by investing in entrepreneurial academics and their ideas."
Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, said: “AI has huge potential for transforming healthcare and freeing up medical professionals’ time - these awards are just the start of an exciting pipeline of new technology that will identify new ways to diagnose, screen and treat illnesses ranging from dementia and sepsis to antibiotic resistant infections and problems in pregnancy.”
The AI in Health and Care Award forms part of the NHS AI Lab and is managed by the Accelerated Access Collaborative in partnership with NHSX and the National Institute for Health Research.
Neuronostics is interested to hear from commercial partners in EEG hardware manufacturing, digital EEG analysis, and companion diagnostics or prognostics, and research and clinical partners with interests in epilepsy, traumatic brain injury and dementia.
The NIHR funding was delivered through the AI in Health and Care Award, part of the NHS AI Lab, which was launched by the UK Government earlier this year to accelerate the adoption of Artificial Intelligence in health and care.
