Innovative Wearable and Open Platform for a Personalized Treatment of Stress

Project Information

XANA

Grant agreement ID: 781703

DOI

10.3030/781703

Project closed

EC signature date 17 July 2017

Start date 1 August 2017

End date 30 November 2017

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

WALDEN MEDICAL NEURO DIGITAL THERAPIES, S.L.
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - XANA (Innovative Wearable and Open Platform for a Personalized Treatment of Stress)

Reporting period: 2017-08-01 to 2017-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Walden Medical® has been created aiming to design, develop and commercialize XANA product (device and platform): a personalized and non-invasive neurostimulation treatment for stress relief. Previous R&D project results, where three of the founders were involved, showed the potential and technical viability required for boosting the creation of the company.
The initial goal was to develop a non-invasive system to stimulate parasympathetic nervous system activity and thus maintain homeostasis, compensating for the excessive activation of the sympathetic nervous system due to the response to stressful stimuli.
After several anatomical and physiological studies, we designed an ergonomic and usable wearable neurostimulator operated from a software app for smartphone and capable of electrically stimulating the Auricular Brach of the Vagus Nerve.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Once the design was completed, we developed the prototype for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that consists of an auricular electrical neurostimulator connected by Bluetooth to our software app.
This development process served also to determine the functional properties and specifications for the optimization of the XANA MVP product. The improvements to get a more user-friendly, efficient and customized product (XANA BCAS) are:
Bilateral: one stimulator for each ear, to improve efficiency.
Customized: An scan of the user´s auditory canals will be used to build the anatomically customized stimulators.
Autonomous: the stimulators can operate without the smartphone.
SMART: implementation of both electrical and mechanical stimulation and music therapy.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Since stress affects over 40% of the worldwide population and is linked to over 70% of physical and mental disorders XANA will help to:
1. Solve a high prevalence problem associated to current lifestyle.
2. Prevent other conditions that can be triggered by stress (e.g. anxiety, depression).
3. Decrease the costs of absenteeism and reduce the enormous healthcare system costs, directly caused by stress and indirectly caused by stress-linked-conditions.
4. Reduce the abuse of medication (Benzodiazepines) that causes addiction among other serious side-effects.
5. Develop the mobile Health offer which is the main social trend regarding prevention, monitoring and treatment in the health sector.

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