{"id":4076,"date":"2023-07-27T09:18:12","date_gmt":"2023-07-27T09:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/?post_type=article&p=4076"},"modified":"2023-11-15T11:25:35","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T11:25:35","slug":"information-on-a-brain-wave","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/article\/information-on-a-brain-wave\/","title":{"rendered":"Information on a (Brain) Wave"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Sports physicians deliberate over when to allow an athlete to return to the court or back to the training field after incurring a blow to the head and sustaining a concussion. Is he fit to continue immediately following the injury? And if he returns to the court after only a few hours rest \u2013 does he risk irreversible brain damage? The ElMindA Corporation which is developing technologies for the mapping and examination of brain function, provides a solution for this dilemma and other similar issues also bothering physicians treating patients suffering from various neurological and psychiatric diseases such as Parkinson’s, depression, Alzheimer’s, epilepsy and other cognitive disorders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Head injuries are considered a national scourge in the United States, with more than five million cases of concussion each year, mainly in children. Therefore, when we started out, we focused on head injuries and concussion”, explains Dr. Ziv Peremen, VP Research Programs at ElMindA. “In this context, we developed a tool for physicians that assist them in understanding the manner in which the brain recovers and, consequently, in decision-making. For example, in the case of injured athletes, the physicians need to decide if they can return to the training field or whether they are in need of continued rest to prevent ongoing damage. The Olympic Committee authorized the use of the BNA system (Brain Network Activation) that we developed for the last Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil, and the Olympic team also intends to consider widespread use of this system in the Games that will be held in Tokyo in 2020.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Also, the technology we have developed can also be utilized in the fields of psychiatry. For example, it can examine the effectiveness of a new treatment given to patients with depression, and brain activity can also be tracked after the treatment to identify a deterioration in time to provide advance treatment thereby preventing the patient’s condition from progressing to more challenging and dangerous stages.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ElMindA was established eleven years ago and is considered one of the leading companies in Israel and the world in the field of brain monitoring. In 2014, the company received a regulatory authorization from the FDA (the Food and Drug Administration), and also possesses parallel authorization from Europe and other countries \u2013 Canada, Brazil and naturally Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The brain is a fascinating area, and our vision is to bring the digital world into the clinic, to make use of the tools that enable us to objectify brain processes and then create value for physicians from them,” explains Dr. Peremen. “The unique BNA system that we have developed performs a multi channel and non-invasive electrophysiological test, with the objective of identifying patterns in the patient’s neural networks’ activity while he is performing different neurological processes. The identification of these patterns enables physicians to map this activity and compare them to that of healthy brains. In practice, the BNA system produces different objective, quantitative and qualitative insights for the physicians regarding the patient’s brain activity to assist diagnosis and enable them to make better treatment decisions.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Our development is based on the EEG technology \u2013 a device that was invented already a hundred years ago, that includes electrodes attached to the patient’s skull with which the brain’s electrical activity is recorded. We use the existing hardware from the world of epilepsy or sleep problems to gather the data on brain activity, but our results also include neuro-cognitive information, clinical data, and other imaging tools. Our most significant development is the EEG-based program that maps and analyzes the data thereby producing insights of life-saving importance”, Dr. Peremen explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Four years ago, ElMindA joined as a partner in the BSMT (Brain Stimulation and Monitoring) Consortium, organized and supported by the MAGNET Incentive Program, one of the support programs of the Technological Infrastructure Division at the Israel Innovation Authority, led by Ilan Peled. Three other companies are also members in the BSMT (Alpha Omega, Insightec, and Brainsway) while other partners include academic centers from Israel active in neuro-research. The consortium creates collaborations that enable the combining of the brain monitoring device with technology for brain stimulation out of an objective to enhance and enable personal adaptation of the treatment for different neurological and neuro-psychiatric disorders. The consortium has created a robust and cooperative business environment that constitutes an advantage for the group from Israel versus parallel technologies from around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, ElMindA is a partner in IBT-Tech \u2013 the Union of Israel Brain Technologies \u2013 yet another program in the Israel Innovation Authority’s Technological Infrastructure Division. IBT-Tech is the initiative of Dr. Peremen from ElMindA, Imad Younis from Alpha Omega, Dr. Dekel Teliaz from the Teliaz Corporation and Miri Polachek from IBT. The initiative’s objective is to bring together the Israeli companies active in the field of brain research, to implement a program for distributing and assimilating advanced technologies and for the sharing of R&D-supporting resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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