Neurolab Seed
Building a more inclusive understanding of the human brain
Solution Summary
Brain function is highly dependent on life context. To fully understand the human brain, we must expand research to diverse communities around the world. Sapien Labs’ Neurolab Seed, a globally distributed lab, expands research by making it quick and cost-effective to administer electroencephalogram (EEG) tests.
Neurolab Seed provides a research kit that includes EEG equipment, training and tutorials, analytics tools, and access to Brainbase, a research management platform with good data standards. Researchers around the world pay to use Brainbase as a common platform to upload EEG data. Sapien Labs uses this income to subsidize the “seeding” of hardware to universities in underrepresented regions, thereby increasing the volume of EEG data from people in those regions.
Market Opportunity
- Recent work shows brain dynamics can differ up to a thousandfold across global populations.
- 75 percent of human neuroscience research is conducted in the USA and Western Europe, often on university-educated students—which is representative of less than 10 percent of humanity.
- Studies typically consist of 20-50 subjects and lack standardization, making it difficult to aggregate and compare data.
Highlights
- Beta version launched in 2017
- Existing operations in six countries
Organization Goals
- Seed additional labs around the globe
- Attain sustainable revenue through subscription model
Existing Partnerships
Sapien Labs currently partners with:
- Public Health Foundation of India
- Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina
- Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul, Brazil
- Hoa Lac Hi Tech Park, Vietnam
- Macquarie University, Australia
- University of Khartoum, Sudan
Partnership Goals
Sapien Labs seeks:
- Additional grant funding
- Universities, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and neurologists to expand kit distribution
- Pre-Seed
Our solution provides a research platform (brainbase.io) to accelerate and amplify human neuroscience along with equipment and training (neurolab kit) to quickly and cost effectively seed EEG labs across the world in underrepresented countries for a large scale and inclusive understanding of the human brain.
Recent work shows stark differences in brain dynamics that are dependent on life context and can be up to 1000-fold different across global populations. Yet today, 75% of human neuroscience is conducted in the US and W.Europe usually on university students, a context relevant to <10% of humanity. Furthermore, studies typically consist of 20-50 subjects and lack standardized data formats and protocols making it difficult to aggregate and compare.
Our solution enables large scale global datasets with clear data standards that are easily analyzed and compared and will therefore lead to better tools to understand and manage brain health.
Platforms can accelerate and amplify human productivity by providing a host of efficiencies, expanding participation and enabling collaboration. Thus far science has been relatively individualistic and has not utilized the power of platforms as effectively as other fields. Our platform provides plug and play tools to amplify the scale and speed of discovery and opportunity for developing countries to build strong ecosystems in neuroscience/neurotech far more cost effectively than in any other field. Doing so can also quickly open opportunities for direct applications in various fields from health and education to BCI to neuromarketing in these local regions.
Our goal is to have one million EEG recordings in brainbase by 2022, that are high quality, well annotated and as representative as possible of the global population. We anticipate that doing so will spawn numerous insights and tools that better serve brain health on a global scale.
This will be driven by growing participation in brainbase from existing labs as well as the pace at which we are able to seed and grow neurolab ecosystems in under-represented regions around the world. We plan to seed 250 NeuroLabs, including 6 regional hubs, by 2022.
EEG data quality will be defined by automated checks of meta data completeness and signal quality - The number of high quality EEG records in brainbase.
- The number of NeuroLabs seeded
- The average number of participants and collaborators per study on brainbase.
- Number of times a data set is used by others (thereby amplifying its impact). - Brainbase participation
- The fraction of records from regions outside the US and Western Europe
- The number of countries represented in the database.
- The geographic diversity of the data
- Child
- Adult
- Lower middle income economies (between $1006 and $3975 GNI)
- Low-income economies (< $1005 GNI)
- Latin America and the Caribbean
- Middle East and North Africa
- Consumer-facing software (mobile applications, cloud services)
- Digital systems (machine learning, control systems, big data)
- Imaging and sensor technology
Our solution is unique in the neuroscience space in its international focus, easy plug and play front end for untrained researchers, and sophisticated backend automation of data processing and parsing.
Our Neurolab kit reaches out to underrepresented parts of the world to provide a voice to the unique issues of these populations.
Our platform provides data management tools, protocols and analytics requiring minimal training to get started.
Our backend has sophisticated automation to ensure clean, complete and properly formatted metadata and EEG files. This includes features such as NLP based parsing of text based clinical histories into a searchable database.
Brainbase and the NeuroLab kit are designed to accelerate and amplify human neuroscience research by providing tools to augment individual researcher capability and expand the scope of participation. It is fundamentally a human-centered approach. As the platform grows, it will become an instrument used and also produced by the research community, one that will more equitably represent the brain health challenges of underserved populations.
Brainbase is a cloud based software as a service (SaaS) platform with both free and subscription based options accessed through a simple online sign-up. For locations where bandwidth may impose constraints, the platform comes equipped with offline tools for easy future syncing of data.
Neurolab kit will be accessed by applying through a form on our website and training will be eventually delivered through online courseware.
- 4-5 (Prototyping)
- Non-Profit
- United States
Brainbase will have a free version, paid subscription version and paid premium tools. Over three years, our goal is to sustain the costs of running Brainbase through platform revenue. Funds available as part of our budget for this year will support the development of v1.0 of the platform and seeding of an initial set of 10 labs to demonstrate program feasibility. Initially seeded labs will augment existing labs in related fields with direct costs limited to equipment ($5,000 - $10,000 per year).
Existing funding will also be supplemented by external grants to expand the scope of the platform and to fund the next 100 labs. For further expansion we will pursue institutional and government partnerships worldwide to engender support for human neuroscience/neurotech programs in their countries. A 3 person NeuroLab in Asia would cost $50-100,000 a year including salaries and travel costs (contrast to several $100,000s needed for a wet lab).
Although a non-profit, the goal is to ensure sustainability of the platform and its related costs through subscription revenue. This depends on the rate at which paid subscribers join Brainbase relative to users of the free version, and the cost of acquisition of paid subscribers.
The pace of growth in developing countries is limited by our ability to get the word out and facilitate additional funds for neurolab partners in developing countries to grow. This can be accelerated by government and university level partnerships.
- Less than 1 year
- We have already developed a pilot.
- 6-12 months
http://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/04/11/125898
http://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/04/11/125906
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QeYNU_pyUE
- Brain Augmentation
- Neurodegenerative Disease
- Behavioral / Mental Health
- Digital Health
- Medical Training
Inclusive brain research at scale is an important precursor to inclusive brain health. Success at global scale requires a network of partnerships and people with similar goals. Given our aligned objectives, Solve is uniquely positioned to help us reach out to a global network of governments, universities, researchers, and other actors for further partnerships in support of our program and platform.
- Universidad Nacional de San Martin, Argentina (Regional Hub led by Drs. Dante Chialvo and Nadia Justel)
- Public Health Foundation of India (Research Collaboration for development of cognitive health assessments and metrics in low income children, led by Dr. Vikram Patel)
- Temple University (Collaboration for Clinical Data Acquisition with Dr. Joseph Picone)
Though we don’t have direct competitors, there are several n
Solver Team
Organization Type:
Nonprofit
Headquarters:
Arlington, VA, USA
Company Stage:
Pilot
Working in:
SE Asia, S America, E Africa
Employees:
3
Website:
https://sapienlabs.org/
Founder and Chief Scientist