EPILEPSIAE - Evolving Platform for Improving Living Expectation of Patients Suffering from IctAl Events
EU project EPILEPSIAE started in January 2008
What did Danny Glover, Pope Pius IX, Vladimir Lenin, Rudi Dutschke, Neil Young, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Socrates, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon I of France had in common? They, like at least 40 million people worldwide nowadays, suffer from epilepsy. Epilepsy is one of the commonest serious brain disorders, probably the most universal of all medical disorders. It occurs at all ages, especially in childhood and old age. Worldwide one hundred million people suffer from a seizure at some time in their lives. Currently nearly one out of three epilepsy patients cannot be treated by therapeutics like anti-epileptic medication. They are utterly subject to the sudden and unforeseen seizures that have a strong impact on their everyday life, with temporary impairments of for instance motor control, perception, speech, memory or consciousness. It is our main goal to improve the quality of life of people suffering from epilepsy, especially for those who are not treatable by common therapeutic strategies.
Our mission of the EPILEPSIAE project is to use Information and Communication Technologies to empower the epileptic patients to monitor their own risks and improve their safety in daily life, strengthening their social integration.
Our vision is to develop an intelligent non-invasive alarming system, which is transportable by the patient. The device automatically measures the brain activity. It will be capable of predicting the upcoming seizures considerably before seizure onsets and provides the patient with this information for example by sending a text message to the patient’s cell phone. This in turn will allow the patient to assess the risk of his actual situation and acting accordingly to improve his safety and privacy. Another important output of the project is a large and well-documented European Database on Epilepsy.
We, the EPILEPSIAE consortium funded by the European Union for 3 years, consist of six partners from 4 European countries: 2 academic teams (Portugal, Germany), 1 mixed academic/clinic team (France), 2 clinic teams (Portugal, Germany), 1 industrial company (Italy), covering the whole value chain from theoretical conception to market products and final users.
For further information please refer to the project website http://www.epilepsiae.eu.