Philips, MIT Want to Transform Brain Injury Monitoring

The goal is create a noninvasive way to measure intracranial pressure.

Chris Newmarker

Philips and MIT have forged a partnership to potentially transform the way brain injuries are monitored.

The fully non-invasive calibration-free, portable technology would monitor intracranial pressure (ICP) through a combination of Philips ultrasound technology and MIT physiological modeling, Philips and MIT said Wednesday. Such a device could enable better diagnosis and triage of people with potential brain injuries, whether they are on the football field, ambulance, battlefield or emergency room.

The quest to create the technology is but the latest in a string of moves Philips has made to innovate in mobile health and medtech in general. Philips, for example, has unveiled app-based ultrasound, and it is working with Salesforce, and the Netherlands-based Radboud University medical center to create a mobile-based app and online community to greatly help type-1 diabetes patients manage their condition.

About four months ago, Philips inked a five-year, $25 million alliance with MIT to further research in its core areas of healthcare and lighting solutions.

Philips' lastest work with MIT is meant to bring ICP monitoring to a much wider group of patients, since the present method of ICP monitoring is an invasive process. ICP monitoring currently involves surgically penetrating the skull or lumbar spine, and inserting a catheter into the cerebrospinal fluid space or neural tissue.

Because of the risk of infection or damage to brain structures from such a procedure, ICP monitoring only takes place among a small group of patients with severe head injuries.

To develop the noninvasive alternative, Philips will work with leading neurosurgery experts to test a core estimation algorithm developed by the Integrative Neuro-monitoring and Critical Care Informatics Group in MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES).

"The current invasive method of measuring ICP is used only in the sickest patients, but knowledge of ICP is potentially important in a much broader population," MIT professor Thomas Heldt, the principal investigator of the study, said in a news release.

"Our goal is to develop a noninvasive method of measuring ICP that could be used in treating a much wider range of conditions. This project gives us an exciting opportunity to test innovative hardware and modeling techniques at the bedside in real time," Heldt said.

The two-year project could bring ICP monitoring to non-traditional patients, including those with unexplained headaches, mild and moderate traumatic brain injury, or even coma patients.

"Through this research, we hope to use the same technology most people associate with the first images of their child, in a way that has the potential to help us to differentiate a concussion from a serious traumatic brain injury and everything in between. ... By improving access and response times, these types of solutions have the potential to really impact patient outcomes," said Joseph Frassica, chief science officer of Philips Research North America.

Chris Newmarker is senior editor of Qmed and MPMN. Follow him on Twitter at @newmarker.