During their first two years of life about 10% of all toddlers exhibit unusual or “strange” movements at some point in time. Infantile spasms (IS) are the most common epilepsy syndrome in this age group with an incidence of 1:2500. Diagnosing (IS) is crucial for immediate treatment and preventing long-term cognitive impairment and recurrent seizures in toddlers. Prompt differentiation of IS from other movements is challenging, as these seizures can be subtle, brief, may resemble normal behavior, and rarely occur during a typical pediatric visit or in emergency rooms.

As a result, diagnostic delays are common, leading to severe consequences for the affected children, their families, and society due to high medical costs and loss of productivity. Smartphone videos taken at home have proven to be an effective tool for faster and more accurate recognition of IS seizures when in the hands of clinical experts. The team’s solution, called motus med, utilizes the power of AI technology, and smartphone-based videos to speed up the timeline of the IS diagnosis.

The motus med provides a diagnosis support tool for PEDs and ERs – two groups confronted daily with concerned parents. It empowers parents to document any strange movements of their toddlers immediately, to quickly determine if the movement is, in fact, a seizure, and to connect them with an effective healthcare provider.

The seizure detection technology has been developed using large-scale, expert-labeled datasets, has been proven to work with videos recorded from smartphones, and benefits further from previous validation in a multi-center trial that was previously led by the team (G-BA Innovationsfonds). motus med’s aim is to shorten the time to diagnosis for infants and toddlers with suspected seizures, and thus reduce the chance of life-long impairments and costs.

The vision is to scale the technology and become an integral part of epilepsy management and care, such as monitoring treatment response. Our long-term vision is to become a medical video-based diagnostic platform not only for epilepsy, but also for other neurological conditions.

The team consists of experienced neurologists and data scientists from Charité and BIH with long-standing international and award-winning expertise in AI applications across the epilepsy diagnostic pathway, and an extensive network with leading academic centers, insurance providers, as well as patient support groups.