GE and the NFL Award BrainScope with Further Funding
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GE and the NFL Award BrainScope with Further Funding

GE NFL Head Health Challenge I Final Award to be Used to Develop Sports Concussion Product for High School Students

BETHESDA, MD. July 23, 2015 – BrainScope Company, Inc. today announced that it has received an additional $500,000 award from GE and the National Football League (NFL) to further enhance its portable concussion assessment system, as one of six final winners of the GE NFL Head Health Challenge I. In February 2014, Brainscope was selected as one of the initial 16 recipients from more than 400 entries from 27 countries of the up to $10 million Challenge, which was created by GE and the NFL to award entrants for proposals focusing on “identifying breakthrough technologies and approaches that will improve the diagnosis and prognosis of mild traumatic brain injury (TBI)."

Under the first phase of the GE NFL Head Health Challenge, BrainScope conducted a study in athletes using neuroimaging tools to explore the relationship with BrainScope’s urgent care, handheld, electroencephalograph (EEG) traumatic brain injury detection technology. The study, conducted with the Purdue Neurotrauma Group, demonstrated the potential of BrainScope measures to act as a surrogate biomarker for neuroimaging in the evaluation of concussion and revealed the unique potential for a marker of those with increased vulnerability/susceptibility to concussion if they return to play.

Emanating from this work under the GE NFL Head Health Challenge I and in partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense, BrainScope is developing a portable concussion assessment system to be used at the point of care utilizing its core EEG technology and leveraging six years of studies in high school and collegiate sports settings to optimally identify concussed from non-concussed patients. BrainScope will be conducting further studies in high schools using funding from this phase of the GE NFL Head Health Challenge I to develop this concussion assessment technology to address the very significant public health issue of objectively identifying concussion and assessing recovery.

“We are greatly honored to receive this second award from GE and the NFL and are enthusiastic about the opportunity to extend this important work," said Michael Singer, Chief Executive Officer of BrainScope. “The learnings from the first phase of the Head Health Challenge have provided valuable insights as a foundation for this next phase of multi-site studies in high schools across the United States as we work toward the development of our handheld concussion assessment system for future use in both adults and adolescents."

In May BrainScope announced that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had cleared the company’s Ahead 200 device. Using commercial smartphone hardware that leverages Google’s Android operating system, the Ahead 200 records and analyzes a patient’s EEG using a custom sensor attached to the smartphone to provide an interpretation of the structural condition of the patient’s brain after head injury. The Ahead 200 is a smaller, more rugged and modernized version of BrainScope’s Ahead 100 traumatic brain injury assessment technology, which was cleared by the FDA in November 2014.

BrainScope has been awarded more than $27 million of U.S. Department of Defense research contracts for the development of its TBI and concussion assessment technology and has received significant funding from private investors to accelerate its development efforts.

Results from clinical studies utilizing BrainScope’s technology have been independently published through 15 articles in leading peer-reviewed neurotrauma and emergency medicine journals, including Journal of NeurotraumaBrain InjuryAcademic Emergency MedicineJournal of Head Trauma RehabilitationThe American Journal of Emergency Medicine, and Military Medicine.

BrainScope holds 86 issued and pending patents related to its technology.

 

 

About BrainScope

Backed by Revolution (created by AOL co-founder Steve Case), Shaman Ventures, ZG Ventures, State of Maryland Venture Fund, Brain Trust Accelerator Fund, and Difference Capital, BrainScope is a medical neurotechnology company that is developing a new generation of hand-held, easy-to-use, non-invasive instruments designed to aid medical professionals in rapidly and objectively assessing TBI. BrainScope devices in development are based on a proprietary technology platform, which integrates databases of brainwave recordings with advanced digital signal processing, sophisticated algorithms, miniaturized hardware and disposable headset sensors. BrainScope's unique devices are being created to meet a long-standing clinical need for improved early identification, staging and triage of head injured patients. BrainScope devices under development, including the Ahead 300 and the Ahead Concussion Assessment System, for assessment of traumatically-induced structural head injury and concussion are for investigational use only. For more information, please visit www.brainscope.com.