DALLAS: People with epilepsy suffer from recurrent, unprovoked seizures that can cause injury and even death from “sudden unexpected death in epilepsy” (SUDEP), a condition that occurs minutes after a seizure ends.
Now Empatica, co-founded by MIT professor and wearables pioneer Rosalind Picard, has developed a medical-quality consumer wristband, called Embrace, that monitors stress signals to detect potentially deadly seizures and alert wearers and caregivers, so they can intervene.
Researchers worldwide are using a scientific version of the wristband, called the E4, which also measures other signals, to study epilepsy and other neurological and psychiatric conditions. Numerous academic papers are now published, showing that the combined electrodermal activity (EDA), also known as skin conductance, and motion data collected from the wrist improve the accuracy of seizure detection over using only motion data.
Now Empatica is prepping to release Embrace, “a consumer-looking, but medical-quality device” for monitoring stress and seizures, says Picard, a professor of media arts and sciences in the MIT Media Lab and Empatica’s chief scientist. After a successful Indiegogo campaign last year, the beta version of Embrace shipped to backers last Friday…