Our Solution

A novel, passive, and highly precise digital biomarker to detect and monitor
a range of Neurological diseases and Psychiatric disorders

The Challenge


Neurodegenerative diseases and psychiatric disorders represent the largest challenge to the global healthcare system, and the problem is accelerating with the aging population. 

The biggest missing infrastructure in Brain Health is a routine, scalable measurement layer for cognition. The brain-health ecosystem cannot scale if cognitive measurement depends primarily on people actively taking tests in clinics or research settings. Today, cognitive assessment depends primarily on existing concern or clinical need, rather than on continuous, routine measurement. This creates a measurement gap: without baseline and longitudinal data, it is difficult to detect meaningful change, demonstrate whether an intervention works, or quantify the value of investing in brain health.

The Solution

The NeuraMetrix passive digital brain-health biomarker can help address this gap by continuously collecting data during people's normal daily lives as they type on their keyboard, without requiring them to stop to complete a formal cognitive test.
The rationale can be summarized in five points:
  • Move from episodic testing to continuous measurement
Traditional cognitive tests provide episodic snapshots; the NeuraMetrix passive digital brain-health biomarker enables continuous, longitudinal measurement of change against an individual baseline.
  • Make cognitive measurement scalable
Specialist-led cognitive testing is too costly and resource-intensive to become routine for entire populations. The NeuraMetrix passive digital brain-health biomarker collects data remotely and repeatedly at a much lower burden. This makes population-scale cognitive monitoring more feasible.
  • Capture cognition in the real world
Clinic-based testing measures performance under artificial, controlled conditions. The NeuraMetrix passive digital brain-health biomarker detects early changes in cognitive and motor functions while people go about their normal lives. This gives researchers an opportunity to measure real-world functioning, not just performance during a test.
  • Enable more scalable clinical trials
The problem is that conventional trials often enroll a relatively narrow subset of the real-world population. The NeuraMetrix passive digital brain-health biomarker offers a remote, longitudinal measurement that reduces participant burden, supports broader recruitment, monitors disease progression and measures treatment response.
  • Objective outcome measure for interventions
The NeuraMetrix passive digital brain-health biomarker helps determine whether prevention and treatment strategies produce meaningful changes over time.
The NeuraMetrix passive digital biomarker is needed because scaling brain health requires moving from occasional, burdensome cognitive snapshots to continuous, low-burden, real-world measurement that establishes individual baselines, detects change, evaluates interventions, and enables much larger, more representative clinical trials.

NeuraMetrix Typing Cadence (TC) is a Passive Digital Biomarker measuring typing inconsistency which is a superb measure of cognitive and motor performance

A passive, non-invasive digital biomarker capable of detecting and monitoring neurodegenerative diseases and psychiatric disorders by measuring typing inconsistency, which is an accurate and granular measure of brain health at a far superior statistical quality level. No tests or special equipment are needed; there is no burden on the patient.

Typing is our strongest habit and thus hardwired in our brains. When a disease or disorder attacks the brain, the wiring begins to break down slowly, in very small increments.  NeuraMetrix’s software can identify microscopic changes in typing cadence – a change of 1/100th of a second can be statistically significant in identifying cognitive and motor function deterioration. 

As a result, NeuraMetrix can:
  • Detect early changes in cognitive and motor function
  • Identify the onset long before the patient would notice any signs of disease
Our passive digital biomarker measures "inconsistency" in the typing cadence as a signal of onset or progression of neurodegenerative diseases and psychiatric disorders. 

The NeuraMetrix TC clinical support software is a passive form of data collection, independent of language, alphabet, culture, education, or training. Moreover, it does not require any tests, sensors, gross motor skills, or any interaction by the physician.

Our Product

Below video gives an overview of the NeuraMetrix product:
Our product consists of three components: 
  • NeuraMetrix TC Application
  • NeuraMetrix Server
  • NeuraMetrix Online Dashboard

Key Strokes Analyzed:

keyboard plus algorithms equals digital biomarker

NeuraMetrix TC Application

Patient Centricity - Install and Forget
NeuraMetrix software is language- and alphabet-independent and easy to install on any Windows PC or laptop. The app can be downloaded to the patient's own device via an email from the patient’s physician or a member of the clinical trial team. Within a few mouse clicks, the NeuraMetrix application runs continuously in the background without requiring any action from the patient.  It monitors the individual patient's brain health whenever the computer keyboard is used.

NeuraMetrix TC does not involve any tests; it simply passively and continuously measures the patient's natural behavior. The tool never collects any PHI (Personal Health Information). It cannot analyze the content of what is being typed; instead, it measures the inconsistencies in how the individual types. For more information on how we use the data, see our privacy policy here. In this context, speed or accuracy does not affect the inconsistency measures. What is important is that each person’s typing cadence is unique and yields quantitative data about the person’s cognitive and motor functions. It delivers very large samples – often 10K keystroke data points per day.

NeuraMetrix Server

Periodically, the typing cadence data is uploaded to NeuraMetrix's secure, automated servers and analyzed by our proprietary algorithms. This creates NeuraMetrix's proprietary measure of inconsistency, called SINCOR, and adds a new data point to the user’s record.

NeuraMetrix Online Dashboard

The NeuraMetrix Online Dashboard enables remote monitoring and provides precise, objective results through insights and visualizations of NeuraMetrix measurements. These visualizations are available to the Healthcare Provider, Research Institution, and Patient (if the Healthcare Provider permits).
 
A line graph over time is shown on the NeuraMetrix Online Dashboard with data points added whenever the server gets a new file. The y-axis shows the NeuraMetrix inconsistency score and the x-axis indicates the time. Inconsistency level is an indication of the disease state – low variability indicates less or no disease. An upward trend means the disease is getting worse. 
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High fluctuations mean the disease is poorly regulated.
NeuraMetrix Charts - inconsistencies and fluctuations
As a healthy subject, this chart shows a very low inconsistency and minimal fluctuations
Healthy persons, like this subject, have a very low inconsistency and minimal fluctuations
NeuraMetrix data can distinguish between the “on-off’ periods
Parkinson's patients, like this subject, often suffer “on-off’ periods (treatment active or not). Lower inconsistency, healthy subjects, indicate “on” and higher indicate “off” periods. The empty area between ‘on’ and ‘off’ shows that NeuraMetrix data can distinguish between the periods.


​​​​​​​Wide Range of Use Cases


NeuraMetrix passive digital brain-health biomarker has a wide range of use cases, which are described on the following pages:

Diseases and Disorders


There are 600+ incurable and debilitating Neurodegenerative Diseases and 200+ Psychiatric Disorders, which all lead to an extremely large cost burden to society. Here are four of the major diseases and disorders described and how NeuraMetrix passive digital brain-health biomarker can help, on the following pages:
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    "For the Brain Economy to deliver, cognitive testing and clinical trials both need to scale


    - Álvaro Fernández, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of SharpBrains.
    Source
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