Grant Funding: NIA SBIR Phase I (R43AG090129)

Title: AVA AI Video-Based Mobile Application for Reliable, Accessible, and Low-Cost Fall Risk Assessments of Older Adults Public Health Relevance Statement: This project presents AVA, a video-based mobile app for at-home fall risk assessment of older adults, only using a smartphone to enable a much higher access, low-cost solution with full privacy protection. AVA empowers caregivers to assess the gait, balance, and strength of their older adults independently without the direct supervision of healthcare professionals. The Phase I study focuses on validating AVA's AI-based assessment technology and its usability in diverse home and independent living settings which can lead to revolutionizing current fall risk assessment practices. Source: R43AG090129 (NIH RePORTER)

Continue ReadingGrant Funding: NIA SBIR Phase I (R43AG090129)

Funding: $38 million in Series B funding secured with an emphasis on growth in the senior living community sector

“Our focus for this strategic funding is to continue to support enterprise customers and meet the strong demand for our technology in senior care.”Honghao Deng, CEO and co-founder, Butlr Burlingame, Calif. – August 26, 2024 – Butlr, a physical AI (PAI) startup, today announced $38M in Series B funding to meet the increasing demand for its sensors and anonymous data that can be used in any building to better understand how humans interact in a space. This results in more collaborative, energy efficient and safer buildings where people work and live. Butlr’s primary customers are in senior living communities and workplaces, with a growing interest among brick-and-mortar retailers. To date, the company has raised $68 million with Foundry as the lead investor for Series B.   An MIT Media Lab spinout, Butlr has patented the combination…

Continue ReadingFunding: $38 million in Series B funding secured with an emphasis on growth in the senior living community sector

Poster Presentation: Military Health System Research Symposium (MHSRS) 2024

Title: Enhancing Mental and Cognitive Fitness Monitoring via Vocal Biomarkers: Applications for Military Personnel Authors: Erik Larsen, Olivia Murton, Xinyu Song, Dale Joachim, Lindsey Venesky, Sam Murdock, Bonnie Wong, Brad Dickerson Abstract:  Maintaining the mental and cognitive fitness of military personnel is critical to ensuring peak operational readiness. Traditional methods like self-reported questionnaires and clinical interviews are often hindered by subjectivity, time constraints, and the stigma surrounding mental health. Vocal biomarkers offer a breakthrough, enabling an unobtrusive, secure, and real-time assessment of mental and cognitive states using readily available smart devices.  Our research validates the effectiveness of vocal biomarkers in remotely monitoring mental and cognitive shifts, including those associated with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and cognitive impairment, as well as real-time cognitive effort. This technology, deployable across consumer electronics and wearables without the need for network…

Continue ReadingPoster Presentation: Military Health System Research Symposium (MHSRS) 2024

Grant Funding: R21 AG088872

Title: Characterizing autonomic impairments in Frontotemporal Dementia This R21 builds upon the tech ready cohort that was established by the pilot project funding. Public Health Relevance Statement: This proposal will test the accuracy and reliability of autonomic measurements in bvFTD patients. Measurements will be collected both with established equipment and via at-home devices to assess the validity of the latter. Finally, autonomic measurements will be correlated to socioemotional dysfunction in patients. Source: R21 AG088872 (NIH RePORTER)

Continue ReadingGrant Funding: R21 AG088872

Grant Funding: 2024 Innovation Award Competition: Center for Advancing Point of Care Technologies in Heart, Lung, Blood and Sleep Disorders (CAPCaT)

Billion Labs Inc is a recipient of the 2024 CAPCaT Innovation Award to further advance the design of the user interface for their VibroBP smartphone app for measuring blood pressure. The award covers $100,000 in direct costs for the 12-month long project. The CAPCaT is a partnership between UMass Chan Medical School and UMass Lowell. The center's mission is to support development and testing of promising, point-of-care technologies that can be rapidly deployed to enhance the diagnosis, monitoring, management and treatment of heart, lung, blood and sleep disorders. The center has an additional interest in projects that incorporate complementary and integrative health approaches. CAPCaT is supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute via U54HL143541. Source: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/blood-pressure-readings-your-fingertips (Press Release)

Continue ReadingGrant Funding: 2024 Innovation Award Competition: Center for Advancing Point of Care Technologies in Heart, Lung, Blood and Sleep Disorders (CAPCaT)

Publication: Data-driven discovery of movement-linked heterogeneity in neurodegenerative diseases. Nature Machine Intelligence

Authors: Mark Endo, Favour Nerrise, Qingyu Zhao, Edith V Sullivan, Li Fei-Fei, Victor W Henderson, Kilian M Pohl, Kathleen L Poston, Ehsan Adeli Abstract Neurodegenerative diseases manifest different motor and cognitive signs and symptoms that are highly heterogeneous. Parsing these heterogeneities may lead to an improved understanding of underlying disease mechanisms; however current methods are dependent on clinical assessments and somewhat arbitrary choice of behavioral tests. Herein, we present a data-driven subtyping approach using video-captured human motion and brain functional connectivity (FC) from resting-state (rs)-fMRI. We applied our framework to a cohort of individuals at different stages of Parkinson's disease (PD). The process mapped the data to low-dimensional measures by projecting them onto a canonical correlation space that identified three PD subtypes: Subtype I was characterized by motor difficulties and poor visuospatial abilities; Subtype II exhibited difficulties in non-motor…

Continue ReadingPublication: Data-driven discovery of movement-linked heterogeneity in neurodegenerative diseases. Nature Machine Intelligence