The Brain Grabs Back (with a little help from some friends)
BrainQ’s Story
Seventeen years ago, Yaron Segal’s son was born with familial dysautonomia, a disorder of the autonomic nervous system. Segal, a geophysicist, decided to keep his work ethic, but rewire his skills to search for a way to improve his son’s condition and quality of life. After years of research, trial after trial, Segal had enough evidence to prove the true potential of his work and founded BrainQ, alongside Yotam Drechsler and Prof. Esty Shohami.
No one doubted Segal’s determination to help immobile people become mobile, but many challenged this concept. After a long and arduous process of trials, Segal and his remarkable team continued on their way to accomplishing the impossible. BrainQ Technologies treats a wide range of neuro disorders, and has already started to see promising results.
The Technology (Refer to image below for diagram)
BrainQ’s innovative device takes a person with neuro disorders like a stroke, spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury, uses their inputs, reads data from their brain activity, assesses the patient’s motor functions, and uses the extrapolated data to personalize a treatment aimed at enhancing one’s neuro recovery process. Their globally patented Machine Learning algorithms are run through a Brain Computer Interface, yielding results regarding movement classification with 95% accuracy. The results, then determine the treatment for the patient. Each treatment changes according to the patient’s current state. BrainQ provides a customized treatment for every individual patient based on the neurological data they collect. While BrainQ’s technology starts with the same database for all of their patients, they combine the patient’s data with the existing data to create a one-of-a-kind treatment.
Grand Opening
On Thursday, June 14th, neurologists, computer scientists, investors, and government officials gathered for BrainQ’s grand opening. It took place in their new office located in Givat Ram’s High-Tech Village, a community of startup offices funded by the Jerusalem Development Authority.
Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem was in attendance, as well as BrainQ’s international investors, along with all of BrainQ’s staff, “an empowering sight,” said one of the startup’s scientists. Clinical partners from hospitals all throughout Israel came to show support, as did tech partners from Google and IBM. The office-welcoming party bursted with supporters from near and far.
More about the event — The Revealing of BQ 1.0 & The testimony
BrainQ revealed technology previously thought of as too futuristic to conceive. They presented the actual machine that they once envisioned and worked tirelessly to develop.
Presenting… the first completed model: BQ1.0, the first in the world with precise personalized treatment for those who have suffered a debilitating spinal cord injury, stroke, or traumatic brain injury, the company’s main neurological indications.
BrainQ shared their outstanding results from their SCI (Spinal Cord Injury) clinical trial, some of which were revealed at the World Congress of Neurorehabilitation last fall, and some were not shown publicly yet.
As the event came to a close, they hung the mezuzah to mark the culmination of BrainQ’s office-warming party, and the beginning to a transformational future.
The Interdisciplinary Dream Team
BrainQ’s product manager credits the startup’s success to their exceptional team comprised of a dedicated staff with eclectic backgrounds in computer science, geophysics, neurology, economics, and management — many of whom were in the elite 8200 intelligence unit of the Israeli Defense Force.
In addition to their in-house team, BrainQ also has an accomplished advisory board. UCLA’s Director of Stroke Image Programming, Dr. David Liebeskind, and the Deputy Chair of the World Stroke Organization, Dr. Natan Bornstein, are just two of the many talented board members.
BrainQ collaborates and engages in research and trials with leading institutions around the world, among them are UC Berkeley, UCLA, Cornell, and McGill. The startup has a strong relationship with most of the major hospitals in Israel. In BrainQ’s last round of fundraising they received $5.3 million, adding onto the $3.5 million they already raised. The investments came from Venture Capital Funds such as OurCrowd and Qure Ventures.
To many, the solutions that BrainQ offers seem too good to be true, and it is one of the numerous astounding developments in the Jerusalem biotechnology ecosystem. BrainQ was partly nurtured by the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA), which provided significant monetary grants and mentoring resources for the company. BrainQ is expected to receive at least 450,000 NIS from the JDA as part of the BioJerusalem ‘Grow your Team’ grant. The JDA aims to help startups in Jerusalem succeed, so that they can share their ingenuity with the rest of the global tech community. Jerusalem is honored to have BrainQ rooted in the startup ecosystem, and hopes to see many more companies like BrainQ take form.
**Resources for Life-Science Entrepreneurs in Jerusalem**
