Monitoring patients via eye-tracking in neuropsychology

The technology helps care teams track patient health over time

Spotted: The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that most people experiencing a mental health condition “receive no treatment.” This can be for a range of reasons, including stigma surrounding seeking help, limited or no services available, or high cost. 

Even once a patient seeks care, many tests are done in-person, providing a single snapshot of an individual’s mental health at that time. Now Austrian startup SOMAREALITY is seeking to digitise care in order to provide continuous monitoring of a patient’s neuropsychological health. Co-founder Adrian Brodesser told Springwise that “SOMAREALITY is the first company that enables real-time insights into the cognitive state of the user without the need for an EEG. [electroencephalogram].” This reduces the cost of diagnosis and monitoring while improving accessibility.

The company has developed digital cognitive biomarkers, based on eye movement, that are tracked and analysed by virtual or augmented reality headsets and smartphones. The eye-tracking technology allows care teams to capture a much broader range of time in their analysis of a patient’s health, and by digitising the data, the startup’s approach makes it much easier to monitor conditions over extended periods.

With much of neuropsychology still reliant on pen-and-paper analysis and record keeping, SOMAREALITY sees digitisation as a way to provide more objective measurements as well as ones that are more easily replicable. And providing the technology via smartphone helps care teams provide care to underserved communities in remote locations. Treatments can also be provided digitally and tailored explicitly to the cognitive load and stress individuals are experiencing at the time they seek care.  

The company recently closed an oversubscribed seed funding round and is focusing on completing product development through 2025. Other industries additional to healthcare that SOMAREALITY is exploring include aviation, training, and sports performance. 

Written By: Keely Khoury