Piramidal’s Foundational AI Brain Model for Neurology Diagnostics

The US is facing an insurmountable shortage of neurologists, driving patients with neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and multiple sclerosis (MS) further away from the care they need. According to the American Academy of Neurology, neurologists approached Congress in 2013, requesting an act that could alleviate the massive shortage, as they expect the number of people with Alzheimer’s to triple by 2050.

Since then, this grave threat to neurological patient care is still far from being alleviated. The neurologist shortage is still widespread across the US, and electroencephalograms (EEGs), the most common and crucial test for neurological disorders, are still followed by manual review processes that are slow-moving and prone to errors.

Piramidal, a YC-backed startup founded by Dimitris Fotis Sakellariou and Kris Pahuja, aims to attenuate the effects the shortage and unsystematic EEG review process brings with its foundational AI model for brain activity, designed to understand and detect brain activity for instant diagnosis of neurological conditions.

Trained on Brainwaves

Sakellariou’s years of achieving his Ph.D. in neuro-engineering brought him to London’s St Thomas’ EEG department. His time there introduced him to a pain point faced by many neurologists: the inefficiency of EEG’s manual review process.

With a shortage of neurologists, wait times for tests can last several months, preventing patients from getting the care they require promptly. In addition to this, Sakellariou witnessed a substantial rise in the collection of EEG data ever since remote EEG devices became a common alternative in the sector. This continuous stream of data, which demands neurologists to manually inspect EEG brainwaves in a rigorous manner, has led to severe margins of error and misdiagnoses.

Sakellariou’s experience in developing scalable machine learning and AI healthcare products, along with Pahuja’s expertise in healthcare and AI products and strategy, led to the creation of Piramidal’s foundational AI model. The model, which is trained on a massive and diverse dataset of brainwaves, essentially brain language, is said to understand and detect brain activity the same way large language models (LLMs) would with the human language.

Neurology Diagnostics

Piramidal claims that its brain foundation AI model can be utilized for a wide range of use cases, even with minimal training and fine-tuning. The model can be used to diagnose a vast majority of neurological conditions swiftly, cutting down the time wasted on manually analyzing EEG data.

Aimed to be serviceable in fields above and beyond merely diagnostics, the model is also said to be useful in drug and biomarker discovery for clinical trials, as well as remote monitoring of any abnormalities in the brain to generate treatment for less critical neurological illnesses or disorders, such as drugs or sleep irregularities.

The model, designed to accommodate and work alongside modern technology, can track brain health in real-time using helmets to view cognition or head injuries. Potential use cases include sports players or individuals in the military. In addition to this, the brain AI model can translate brain signals into everyday actions through VR tech such as Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest.

Piramidal’s first and only product at the moment is a copilot for epilepsy diagnosis powered by its brain model. The product is meant to assist neurologists in obtaining diagnostic insights in real-time, cutting down the time to review patients’ EEGs from hours to seconds. The startup claims that the copilot is sure to standardize EEG analysis, reducing error margins, misdiagnoses, and recurrent hospital visits.

As the startup’s AI brain model is still in early development, empowered by advisors like King’s College London’s Vice Dean for Neuroscience Mark P Richardson, Piramidal is still pushing for further research and development.

The startup is looking for academic or healthcare institutions storing EEG data for record access and, in exchange, offering the model for free. Piramidal is also open to neurologists, sleep doctors, neurotech companies, and companies running clinical trials to automate their EEG data at a fraction of their current cost.

Source: American Academy of Neurology and Medscape

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