Imagine the helplessness of being told your child, recently diagnosed with epilepsy, is at a high risk of dying suddenly, without warning and without a known cause, often in their sleep. The doctors inform you this phenomenon threatening your child's life is called Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP), but that there is very little you can do to prevent it. Imagine the disruption to your life, as you spend hours riddled with constant worry and care-worn sleepless nights. And despite taking extensive measures to monitor your child and their epilepsy, they tragically still succumb to a silent death that you were powerless to predict or prevent. For many families living with epilepsy, this is their reality. 65 million people with epilepsy are at risk of SUDEP. However, SUDEP cannot be predicted nor prevented. The NEUROSENSE project aims to develop the first SUDEP Medical Device (SMD) prototype supported by artificial intelligence (AI) capable of anticipating life-threatening seizures and trigger an automatic emergency drug administration to prevent SUDEP.
Achieving such disruptive technology requires a close unconventional collaboration model between actors in different scientific domains. The NEUROSENSE Consortium has a deep interdisciplinary nature bridging different domains of science and technology: animal modelling and neurobiology (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – CNRS), clinical neurology (Filadelfia Epilepsy Hospital – Dianalund and Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois - CHUV), analytical mass spectrometry (Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde - i3S), mathematical modelling, e-health software development, product design in health sector, medical device implementation, GPDR/HIPAA knowledge (Kinetikos Health), biotechnology, product design, marketing and IP (Biostrike), biosensors and medical electronics (Karolinska Institutet). This synergy of expertise will make it possible to present a breakthrough solution for a major societal challenge helping the EU to attain leadership in the specific domain of SUDEP. Based on the new SMD technology, we will build a diverse portfolio of future projects that will result in long-term benefits for people with epilepsy, their families, caregivers, society and the economy.
