If you read FierceMobileHealthcare regularly, you know about our fascination with the mobile healthcare community in and around San Diego. (This time next week, your intrepid editor will be on a flight to that very city.)
Add another star to the map, this one for Philip Low, creator of the iBrain, a portable, wireless device that measures brain waves through a single electrode rather than a bundle of wires and pads, greatly simplifying the study of sleep patterns. Low, 31, is on the MIT Technology Review list of 35 "young innovators" for developing the algorithm that made the device possible.
Low is marketing the product through NeuroVigil, the La Jolla, Calif.-based company he founded in 2007, and now is testing the iBrain for diagnosing and monitoring sleep disorders and related pharmaceutical treatments. The company also is developing a home version that will automatically send data to a nearby cell phone, then relay the readings to NeuroVigil.
Low expects his portable electroencephalogram monitor to be useful in diagnosing neurological conditions such as autism, schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease, and in tracking the recovery of patients who have suffered brain trauma. He calls it the "democratization of neuroscience."
To learn more about Low and iBrain:
- check out this San Diego Union-Tribune article
- see this MIT Technology Review profile