Stress and mental health issues have taken the world over by storm during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. There is a growing awareness that managing mental wellbeing in our society is critical. While a variety of pharmaceutical and natural/alternative solutions provide some support for our mental health, the medicines give you very little control and can have severe side effects. The natural remedies are modestly effective at best.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could control your mental wellbeing at the touch of a button and even potentially save lives by careful personalised monitoring and management of mental health and wellbeing in key personnel?
At BrainPatch we are a team of scientists and experienced entrepreneurs backed by world-class expert advisors. Our aim is to develop a platform technology of safe and effective brain stimulation for a range of applications. We have originally proposed to use non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation to regulate the immune system in critically ill Covid-19 patients. While this was shown to be effective with invasive vagus nerve stimulation in patients with autoimmune disorders and rheumatoid arthritis, it was not tested in Covid-19 patients and we came across a reluctance from doctors to test our approach with their critically ill Covid-19 patients especially as dexamethasone has evolved as a reliable and tested standard of care for the purpose of regulating immune response. So, taking this into consideration and also considering the emerging mental health crisis related to the pandemic we are proposing a change of the project scope. We propose to re-use the equipment, algorithms and parts of the protocol we generated at the start of the project for the purpose of dealing with a rise in stress and mental fatigue seen in the majority of the population.
This project aims to bring the company closer to putting this solution in the hands of people, who would want to have a personalised app to cope with stress. This project also lays the ground for further research aimed at putting this technology in the hands of the doctors taking care of patients with mental health issues or those suffering from syndrome of chronic fatigue and inflammation in “long-Covid”.