NeuroCoach Secures New Patent to Create the World’s First Brainwave Driven Behavioral Change App
London (PRWEB) August 29, 2013 -- Three important factors are converging to make this patent an exciting and news worthy proposition: 1) President Obama’s recent funding of the Big Brain Initiative which has stimulated a growing interest in harnessing the power of the brain, 2) Apple’s recent circling and interest in the Digital Health market and; 3) A huge and ever increasing demand for cheaper and more effective mental health therapies, as more people across the population are reported to suffer from mental health issues.
In response to this, the important patent (US Patent No. 8,517,912) secured by NeuroCoach Limited today offers an innovative new approach to delivering interactive, personalised brain training and fitness. Utilising the latest retail brainwave headsets from market leader NeuroSky, the NeuroCoach app is personalised to an individual user, providing effective mental health therapy, brain training and fitness to a wider audience for less cost. Launched on the Apple iOS platform earlier this year, the NeuroCoach app is now being used by customers in over 40 countries.
Dr Anton Emmanuel, Consultant Gastroenterologist at University College Hospital in the UK stated: “As both a clinician and academic, I am extremely enthused at the potential for this concept. I have seen the initial application and feel that with relatively minor modification it would be a useful tool for patients with the irritable bowel syndrome, functional dyspepsia, chronic idiopathic constipation and toilet phobia. I have proposed, and begun the protocol of a randomised controlled trial of the intervention.”
NeuroSky CEO, Stanley Yang also commented, “As the market leader in retail brainwave monitoring headsets, we are very pleased to partner with NeuroCoach to deliver their patented, interactive psychological training app. Delivering content which is personalized to the individual based on their brain and body data is certainly the future. Also, with the rapidly increasing demand from healthcare providers for computer delivered, wide scale and cost effective mental health therapies, we believe NeuroCoach is very well placed to take a leadership role in this exciting area of digital health and brain fitness.”
NeuroCoach is a mobile app that uses brainwaves to drive an intelligent media player for delivering psychological training content. By monitoring a user’s brainwaves (and potentially other physiological measures) the app uses analysis and logic to try to determine and personalise the optimal timing of the delivery of instructive and suggestive content, for the desired behavioral change, based on identifying a user’s most receptive state of mind.
Developed over the last 5 years with the aid of two UK government grants, NeuroCoach marks an innovation in biofeedback technology to enable improved brain fitness and sustained behavioral change in health, performance, learning and well-being. With a particular focus on the growing stress management sector, NeuroCoach also recently signed a partnership agreement with market leading retail EEG headset provider NeuroSky. This partnership enables NeuroCoach to leverage the expanding retail interest in the new wave of affordable EEG sensors combined with the potential of mobile devices like the iPad and iPhone.
A NeuroCoach session is designed to follow a process similar to that provided by a trained therapist and monitors for brainwave markers associated with mental focus, relaxation, and receptivity to suggestions. The app uses this data to create a personalised therapy session, that adjusts itself in real-time according to changes in your brainwaves. Using proprietary algorithms, the NeuroCoach app automatically delivers individual clips of content specifically selected to be delivered at the appropriate time for optimum effectiveness. Once the system calculates that you are in a suitably attentive, focused and receptive state, NeuroCoach switches content type and delivers instructional content designed to produce the behavioral changes you are seeking to make.
NeuroCoach has also recently entered discussions with the UK’s National Health Service, via UCL Hospital, about using this technology to address Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), a stress related disorder. The NHS already extensively uses alternative and computerised mental health therapies to address mental health issues such as IBS, and NeuroCoach is seen as a potential automated solution which could provide help to a wider audience at a significantly reduced cost.
NeuroCoach's CEO Jon Clare commented: “We have been truly inspired by the fantastic feedback we have received from our Community to date and our aspirations are to realise the potential of what our technology has to offer. As awareness of our capability grows, we believe that raising further product development capital via Crowdfunding will be a smart way to achieve these aspirations.”
Jon Clare, NeuroCoach Limited, http://www.neurocoach.com, +44 0 44 7799 418960, [email protected]
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