TEDMED: Monitor sleep states from your mobile phone

By: Brian Dolan | Oct 29, 2009        

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NeuroVigilThe number one reason that Alzheimer’s patients are institutionalized is sleep disorders, Dr. Phillip Low, the Founder, Chairman and CEO of NeuroVigil explained during his presenation at the TEDMED conference in San Diego this week. It’s not dementia. Low said that 70 million people in the U.S. have a sleep disorder but only 4 million have had sleep tests.

Low explained that those who do go to a sleep lab might find the process for monitoring for sleep disorders a bit counter-intuitive since the technicians need to attach a couple dozen wires to your head to monitor your brain activity. True, you may have trouble sleeping at home, but it’s time to stick 28 wires on your head to find out why you can’t sleep.

In the morning the lab clinicians need to hand score the results on paper — there is no automatic, analytical process, which means the practice is fraught with errors and inaccuracies, Low said.

NeuroVigil uses an adhesive, wireless sensor or a head strap both of which monitor a single channel of EEG, brainwave activity and analyzes the data using an algorithm called SPEARS. Here’s the longer description from the company’s site: “By taking a single channel of EEG, SPEARS creates a map of brain activity, wherein waking and sleep stages have different signatures. SPEARS can represent a night’s worth of brain activity in clusters, where every sleep and waking state forms a separate cluster. SPEARS can reliably extract a maximal number of stages in minimal time, using a single channel. This means there is no longer a need for 16, 8, or even 2 channels when undergoing an EEG. This also means that no human needs to visually review all data in all those traces. Together, this creates the opportunity for a small, single-channel EEG system that can be performed anywhere, even while driving. Comparison of manual sleep test scoring with automatic scoring from the SPEARS algorithm shows no difference except in the large amount of time and labor saved.”

When used at home, NeuroVigil’s sleep monitoring solution streams and records the patient’s EEG data to and through their cell phone or smartphone. Low said that the company would soon announce a partnership with a big pharmaceutical company.

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  • http://www.wirelesslifesciences.org/2009/10/tedmed-monitor-sleep-states-from-your-mobile-phone/ TEDMED: Monitor sleep states from your mobile phone | Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance

    [...] Read more from the original source: TEDMED: Monitor sleep states from your mobile phone [...]

  • Lawrence Wasserman PhD

    I am working in mHealth and have sleep apnea this application is an advancement as this problem is world wide Looking forward to learn more about this matter. Dr Lawrence 301.424.1383

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    [...] user wears to bed. The system helps users understand their sleep patterns better. Another start-up, NeuroVigil, was featured at TEDMED, as co-founder Philip Low presented on his company’s EEG monitoring [...]

  • http://www.indianewsblog.com/2010/01/26/7865415/daniel-heimpel-revolutionizing-sleep-science-2/index.html Daniel Heimpel: Revolutionizing Sleep Science | India News Blog, Latest News From India, Latest Blogs From India

    [...] Using SPEARS, a high-powered algorithm Low developed while completing his Ph.D. at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, the young brain scientist has repeatedly shown similar results when comparing his sleep test with traditional ones. The breakthrough here is that instead of analyzing multiple streams of data, Low is showing the ability to find similar results while looking at only one EEG reading. The information is shuttled from the single electrode to a transmitter the size of the latest iPod shuffle. Then the EEG reading can be wirelessly transferred from a person’s home computer to NeuroVigil for instant analysis — no technicians. Last October, Low demonstrated such a device, in a live presentation at TEDMED, where Low was famously introduced by Dr. Paul Jacobs, Chairman and CEO of Qualcomm as “the smartest person in the room”. There, he beamed conference organizer Marc Hodosh’s brainwaves straight to his cell phone. [...]

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    [...] MobiHealthNews reported, Low presented the technology at TEDMED 2009. Around the same time, NeuroVigil signed a deal has inked a deal to [...]