Yotam Drechsler (Co-founder/CEO) and Yaron Segal (Co-founder/CINO) from BrainQ Technologies sat down with me to explore Brain-Computer Interface technologies and electrophysiology measurements for aiding neurorecovery, the role of AI and machine learning in tailoring electromagnetic field characteristics to suit each patient, and many other fascinating topics.
Here is a sneak peek of our conversation:
Q: That is the premise or the science behind. You were talking about electromagnetic fields in aiding neurorecovery. Tell us a little bit about what the mechanism is, what toolset have you created to bring these waves in front of a potential patient?
A: I think our challenge was, “how do we take a scientific concept that comes from a physics perspective and make it into a product.” For the customer or patient, there needs to be a clear value proposition that you could actually bind together these big ideas into reality.
Eventually, we developed a therapeutic system. The system is cloud-based and it’s connected to a wearable medical device. This medical device creates frequency-tuned, low-intensity, electromagnetic field therapy. This frequency-tuned electromagnetic field therapy aims to do what Yaron nicely described before. It aims to imitate these natural patterns of brain waves back into our central nervous system in order to facilitate endogenous recovery mechanisms.
We can talk about the mechanism more but actually, I want to give you a bit more information about the technology. There are a lot of interesting features in what we see right now. This device is being designed to be used at home. That means that it’s a robot medical device that could be used by a 75-year-old caregiver to be dressed on, let’s say, an 80-year stroke survivor in a minute or so after very short training. We have taken something which was as big as a room to create an electromagnetic field. It’s been our original design and we have managed to shrink it into something which weighs about five pounds and can easily be administered to the patient and is all cloud-connected.
We have designed it in a way wherein you have a tablet and within the tablet, you would have embedded telemedicine tools and you would have the physical therapy regime. We’re not here to actually replace physical therapy but to amplify its potential. We believe physical therapy is important but it needs to be accompanied by this kind of fertilizer, if you will. We’re also managing to standardize it as a physical therapy regime and be able to create a monitoring system for therapists to be able to administer this therapy at scale to more patients.
This device has been designed to connect to the cloud and provide the therapy by itself and is very safe for anyone based on its safety profile. We coordinated a study that runs a nonsignificant risk in the US at several different sites. In general, it uses its very own test, one that is below the threshold for public exposure. The idea behind it is, like what Yaron said, about facilitating recovery mechanisms that have to do with impaired networks in the brain for an injury by imitating their natural signatures.
For more of our discussion, you can watch the whole Fireside Chat with Yotam Drechsler and Yaron Segal, or listen to the podcast version, below.
To check out previous Fireside Chats and to make sure that you don’t miss any future updates, subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or our podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly leave a review on iTunes.
About Impetus Digital
Impetus Digital is the spark behind sustained healthcare stakeholder communication, collaboration, education, and insight synthesis. Our best-in-class technology and professional services ensure that life science organizations around the world can easily and cost-effectively grow and prosper—from brand or idea discovery to development, commercialization, execution, and beyond—in collaboration with colleagues, customers, healthcare providers, payers, and patients.