By: John Keane, CEO and co-founder, MindRhythm

This is the second blog post in a two-part series.

From a societal standpoint, consumers are increasingly utilizing health tracking devices such as wearables to monitor their well-being – but people are not at all supported if and when they have a stroke. The devastating, permanent results of strokes – particularly LVO strokes, which occur when a major artery in the brain is blocked – take place quickly and without warning. For a stroke victim, every minute counts. Currently, however, efficient, portable stroke monitoring technologies are few and far between.

Why? The brain is an incredibly complicated organ that is difficult to understand. Adding to that, neurology, unfortunately, remains in the dark ages of medicine – still lagging behind technological advancements in other areas such as cardiovascular medicine. Also, historically, stroke monitoring technologies have been too burdensome and bulky, and wearing such monitoring devices day in and day out is unfeasible.

Consider this: 20 percent of strokes are wake-up strokes, which occur when a person is sleeping. The person is unaware that a stroke has occurred until he or she wakes up, and it is incredibly difficult to treat these strokes because the well-time – or the time the patient was last healthy – is unknown. For a stroke victim, the well-time is critically important because there are strict guidelines surrounding time windows for performing a thrombectomy. However, insufficient visibility into stroke timing poses a significant problem for triage, and negatively impacts patient outcomes.

How MindRhythm Solves the Problem

Imagine if a person was alerted of an impending stroke, or a stroke that had just begun, so that he or she could get to a hospital early on in their stroke, or before it had even occurred?

MindRhythm seeks to achieve just that. Leveraging uniquely sensitive accelerometer technology, we have the capabilities to monitor for any neurological changes that indicate a stroke is about to occur or has just begun.

As MindRhythm looks toward the future, we foresee our technology being iterated down to hearing aids, eyeglasses, and helmets. The stroke monitoring device can be worn unobtrusively, like other wearables on the market, and will eventually be made available to assisted living facilities, nursing homes, and the general public. MindRhythm’s Headpulse algorithm can also detect concussions, and other disturbances to the brain’s pulse – and so can eventually be placed within athletes’ helmets, for example.

Though widespread neurological medical advancements have been incredibly limited, MindRhythm is on the forefront of the neurological field – and has developed technologies, in both stroke monitoring and stroke detection – that can significantly advance neurological care, and improve patients’ quality of life and outcomes.

In case you missed it, read our recent blog post to learn how MindRhythm solves another critical market problem: stroke detection.

Posted in Blog Posts