Philips and Accenture develop ALS care proof of concept on top of Emotiv brain wave headset

Philips, Accen­ture test brain-con­trolled sys­tem for ALS patients (Reuters):

“The Nether­lands’ Roy­al Philips and IT con­sul­tan­cy Accen­ture are devel­op­ing soft­ware to help peo­ple with neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases like amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis, com­mon­ly known as Lou Gehrig’s dis­ease, live more independently.

The com­pa­nies said they have built a tri­al appli­ca­tion that lets patients with ALS, a dis­ease that dimin­ish­es mus­cle action, issue “brain com­mands” to turn lights on and off or send an alert to a doctor.

The soft­ware works by con­nect­ing a wire­less head­set devel­oped by Emo­tiv, a San Fran­cis­co-based start­up, to a wear­able device. Emo­tiv says its head­set can read brain waves and trans­late them into read­able data, which is then used to issue com­mands to Philips’ exist­ing con­nect­ed prod­ucts such as “smart” TVs and light­ing systems.”

Accen­ture and Philips stress their app is a “proof of con­cept” but said they have test­ed it with patients…”

Learn more:

• Info­graphic on the Dig­i­tal Brain Health Mar­ket 2012–2020
• 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit (Octo­ber 28–30th, 2014)