Neurovision™: a smartphone application for neurology and telemedicine
Active Project Grant Awarded Last action
- Award ID
- R44NS125709
- Recipient
-
Altec, Inc. UEI C14QW1FDLCA8
- Awarding agency
-
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services
- Obligated
- $970,548
Award facts
- Assistance listing
- 93.853 Extramural Research Programs in the Neurosciences and Neurological Disorders
- Completion date 61% complete
- Place of performance
- Natick, MA 01760, USA
Award details come from USAspending.gov.
Description
- Abstract
- Technological advancements have shifted the delivery of clinical care towards telehealth visits and home-based monitoring solutions as an adjunct to in-person care. This trend has continued with more telehealth visits post-covid than pre-covid to protect patients from potential exposure to communicable diseases and reduce their burden of travelling to specialty centers that are scarce in many regions of the country. The ability to monitor disease symptoms in the home environment is especially beneficial for managing progressive neurological conditions such as parkinson's disease (PD), which results in a complex set of movement disorders that can vary in severity throughout the day. While existing telehealth video platforms are well suited for remote assessment of PD symptoms affecting speech, facial expression, or self-reported changes; a comprehensive physical examination of gait, trunk, upper-, and lower-limb motor function codified using the MDS-unified parkinson's disease rating scale (MDS-UPDRS) is the gold standard for managing medication titration and monitoring disease progression. Existing telehealth video platforms cannot fulfill this requirement due to audio-visual lag, narrow camera field-of-view, artifacts that may obscure visual body tracking, and burdensome camera repositioning. There remains a critical need for tools that can characterize at-home response to treatment to inform teleconferencing or in-person visits. Our team of computer vision experts and movement disorder specialists have successfully developed a proof-of-concept smartphone application (APP) platform, neurovision™, that facilitates objective at-home assessments of PD symptom severity based on the MDS-UPDRS. Our phase I innovation bridged the validation GAP between a cellphone-based camera and research-grade motion capture systems using computer-vision algorithms to support clinical-grade MDS-UPDRS assessments in the laboratory. Phase II will amplify these capabilities with the latest breakthroughs from large language model (LLM) frameworks and monocular depth estimation (MDE) technology to enable high-precision 3D motor symptom tracking using a single 2D video camera that is ubiquitous on consumer-grade mobile iphone, android, or tablet devices. Responsible AI based architectures will be developed to derive and validate automated MDS-UPDRS scores from kinematics that will be made available on a secure cloud-based portal for patient and clinician access. A prototype neurovision™ platform will be optimized for home use through user interfaces to inform the patient, caregiver and clinician; bench-tested for accuracy and reliability; and deployed with the help of two major movement disorder medical centers in the boston area for a longitudinal field-trial in the home. Our milestones are to demonstrate clinical effectiveness of the prototype platform through favorable usability, improved access, and perceived value from self-report ratings among stakeholders, and positive feedback from focus groups; and to plan future pre-commercial clinical trial studies using this phase II deliverable system. Neurovision™ APP will radically change the existing commercialization model of mobile devices that require burdensome wearable sensors, leading to improved disease management and quality of life.
Quick answers
Who received award R44NS125709?
R44NS125709 was awarded to Altec, Inc. by National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (National Institutes of Health) on July 15, 2022.
How much is award R44NS125709 worth?
$970,548 has been obligated on R44NS125709.
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