New York and Palo Alto, California-based MemoryMD has received FDA clearance for NeuroEEG, a wireless amplifier that transmits EEG signals to computers and cloud-based databases via Bluetooth. The other half of MemoryMD's offering, a disposable EEG cap called NeuroCap, is still awaiting clearance.
"Essentially we’ve innovated on existing EEG solutions in the market," MemoryMD Chief Quality Officer Abdus-Salaam Muwwakkil told MobiHealthNews. "We’ve made a simple, more portable, more wireless amplifier. In addition, part of the NueroEEG also includes the software, which allows a doctor to review the patient’s data, evaluate the data, and write a report. As well as all that, the EEG data can be stored and accessed at a later time, and then we provide some basic EEG analysis features."
MemoryMD's products are currently being used in a number of ways. For one thing, they are working with several university athletic departments to help monitor concussions and traumatic brain injuries for research purposes. But the main goal of a smaller, easier to use EEG system is to allow EEGs to be more widely used in the medical space.
"We’re trying to democratize EEG here," Muwwakkil said. "While EEG used to be accessed only by a small circle of specialists in neurology, by simplifying the EEG solution we can expand access to EEG to other types of medical professionals. By layering in a cloud aspect, we can still allow those neurologists to interact with the data by having them review diagnostics based on the data, because that will still be necessary. ... The demand for neurologists is already superseding the current supply. By allowing these other healthcare providers to get involved, we can just kind of expedite the whole point-of-care process."
Muwwakkil says that timely EEGs are especially important in the case of seizures, where doing an EEG quickly after a seizure can improve the accuracy of the diagnosis. Currently, it can take as much as a month to get in to see a neurologist, and most patients can only get an EEG done at a neurologist's office.
"The main takeaway is that we essentially created EEG product with NeuroEEG that can be used in point-of-care environments when you need to get an EEG done in a time-efficient manner, because not getting that EEG done may lose you the opportunity or the window to detect the abnormality that may have been present," Muwwakkil said.
The technology can also make neurologists' offices more efficient. The combination of NeuroEEG and NeuroCap allowed one practice to cut its EEG appointments from 60 minutes to 40, Muwwakkil said, and decrease the set up time from 20 to 25 minutes to five to 10 minutes, allowing the practice to see more patients per day.
