nQ Medical, Inc.
Fostering 24/7, Remote, Passive Data Collection for Research and Management of Neurological Disorders

Driving new digital diagnostic and therapeutic initiatives, Rich Bavasso has been a progressive life sciences entrepreneur and innovator throughout his career. His current venture, nQ Medical, is a company that builds powerful, machine learning based solutions that facilitate clutter-free neurological disease monitoring, research, and care delivery. So, what is this company all about? Bavasso answers, “We are a computational biomarker for neurodegenerative diseases, and that gives us the flexibility to support three important areas of medicine.” First, nQ Medical can detect diseases such as Parkinson’s earlier and more accurately than current gold standard tools. It can track disease progression over time and measure the impact of therapy. The company’s technology can establish a personal baseline for the disease within 90 seconds without relying on any specific tasks or proprietary devices. The second aspect of nQ Medical’s value proposition lies in their ability to passively track disease progression remotely. The company can collect real-world data and get insight into disease while patients live their lives. This benefits clinical trial organizations as they can remotely assess participants without physical attendance in the clinic. They can also measure the therapeutic benefit of treatment in a swift manner. “This makes us the first end-to-end drug life cycle platform as we support R&D; commercial deployment as a companion diagnostic/therapeutic, helping the community physician to treat patients; and for the patient/caregiver to track personal health,” notes Bavasso.

nQ Medical’s software is a 24/7, passive data collection tool that can operate on any personal device. Through its machine learning algorithms it tracks keystrokes and touch screen dynamics of the user to comprehend and detect disease progression. In clinical trial environments, the software is directly installed from the web and then distributed among participants. For patients in the community, the offering can be downloaded as an app that works in the background without any required interaction with a user interface.

The product of 4 clinical trials over 4 years at MIT with a vision to change the way neurobehavioral, neuromotor, and neurocognitive disorders are detected, monitored, and managed, nQ Medical’s artificial intelligence technology form the core of its digital diagnostic software.

The company offers three exclusive dashboards for clinical researchers, attending physicians, and patients/caregivers to gain real-time and retrospective insights into disease progression. For the patient, nQ Medical also delivers a nQI score that helps aggregate progression of their disease. “We have the capability to reach a larger audience more efficiently which is a huge yield for trials and a benefit for the care providers as well,” mentions Bavasso. “We work very closely with CROs and have become a very important component of trials.” Furthermore, the software supports API integrations with EMRs, ERPs, and EDCs for seamless data transfer.

Having carved a unique niche in the clinical trial space for Parkinson’s, nQ Medical is expanding to other diseases, including Alzheimer’s, ALS, MS, and mTBI. The company’s innovation lab is also in the process of developing “matrix” technology that can leverage multiple sensors like voice recognition, facial recognition, and accelerometers to extract more accurate disease scores.”

“At nQ Medical, we believe it’s time to shift our focus to the patient. The patient is essential and so is their data. We’ve made a shift from biased self-reporting to passive, real-world data collection, from subjective analysis to objective measures. We collect data from patients, early, continuously and passively, by meeting them where they live, in the real world. We use leading-edge machine learning and validate it in peer-reviewed, clinically proven studies. We make it available to brain health providers, at high resolution, around the clock. By partnering with the best clinicians and pharmaceutical companies in the world, we can better understand how to detect and manage neurodegenerative diseases. We believe early detection will lead to better brain health. And that will lead to fundamentally better lives.” concludes Bavasso.