The brain is one of the most complex organs of the human body. Understanding and treating brain diseases and disorders has always been a challenging task. While artificial intelligence (AI) and techniques like functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalogram (EEG) are helping researchers and clinicians understand brain functions and develop effective treatments, managing and annotating the enormous data gathered requires technical expertise and is a daunting task.
To address this issue, Rune Labs has designed an easy-to-use platform that can help those with little technical expertise navigate complex platforms. Let’s know more about Rune Labs and how it works.
What is Rune Labs?
Rune Labs is a software and data analytics company for precision neurology, supporting care delivery and therapy development. It aims to revolutionise the way brain disorders are diagnosed and treated with data-related interventions and neurophysiology.
With its cutting-edge technology and user-friendly interface, the Rune Labs platform offers a range of products and services designed to help patients understand their brain health. These include brain imaging services, cognitive assessments and personalised brain training programs.
The history of Rune Labs dates back to 2018, when the founder Brian Pepin was puzzled to see little to no use of technology in approaches to diagnose and treat brain disorders. He noticed a lack of accessibility and complexity in existing brain data platforms, which was a major barrier for patients who wanted to understand their brain health. He then set out to provide an alternative solution that is easy to use and accessible to everyone.
How does Rune Labs work?
Rune Labs has separate offerings for patients and clinicians and life sciences companies. But to build accessible and interoperable data systems to be used by them, it includes several pre-built components.
Pre-built components:
- Patient Portal: A secure, web-based platform that allows patients to access their medical records, schedule appointments, and communicate with their healthcare providers.
- Clinical Data Exchange: A platform for securely sharing medical data between healthcare organisations and providers, enabling more effective collaboration and care coordination.
- Health Data Platform: A scalable, secure platform for managing and storing electronic medical records and other healthcare data.
- Population Health Management: Tools and services for analysing and managing healthcare data at the population level, enabling healthcare organisations to identify trends, patterns, and opportunities for improvement in care delivery.
- Clinical Decision Support: A suite of tools and services that provide real-time, evidence-based recommendations to healthcare providers, helping them make informed decisions about patient care.
For clinicians and patients:
Rune Labs technologies include a patient-facing app called StrivePD, which helps individuals keep track of their symptoms and medication usage and communicate this data to their healthcare providers. It gathers information from the Apple Watch and Medtronic’s Percept Deep Brain Stimulator, which measures brain activity.
Rune Labs then integrates and summarises data from these sources into an accessible dashboard, automates certain processes and offers personalised treatment recommendations. Their technologies seek to enhance patient outcomes and minimise burnout among doctors and patients by helping doctors better identify patient patterns and customise treatment plans to improve patient care.
For researchers and healthcare companies:
Outside clinical care settings, Rune Labs’ technology provides a holistic view of patients. Its insights improve the understanding of patient behaviours and patterns, helping healthcare and life science businesses to provide better support to care teams, researchers, and patients at home.
The company also collects and analyses large datasets to generate rich neuroscience data and provides clinical trial support, real-world evidence and commercial channels, aiding in the development of new treatment modalities for neurodegenerative and psychiatric conditions.
Rune Labs’ Parkinson’s disease treatment
Rune Labs’ healthcare technology has major expertise in providing healthcare services to patients with Parkinson’s disease. It believes data-related interventions can revolutionise patient care and unlock disease-modifying therapies.
Rune Labs’s Parkinson’s care delivery ecosystem, StrivePD involves:
Tracking and managing health data:
Patients can track and monitor their health indicators using the StrivePD app and the Apple Watch, and share this information with their healthcare providers. This can assist them in identifying patterns and trends in their health and making informed decisions about treatment and lifestyle choices.
Facilitating communication with healthcare providers:
The StrivePD app makes it easier for patients to communicate with their doctors, ensuring that they receive timely and appropriate care. Their technology helps clinicians optimise treatment plans and deliver personalised neuromodulation therapies, such as adaptive deep brain stimulation.
Improving treatment outcomes:
By using data from the Apple Watch and the Percept Deep Brain Stimulator to optimise treatment plans and remind patients about medications, clinicians can improve patient outcomes and the quality of life of people with Parkinson’s disease.
Rune Labs is also constantly scaling its reach and expertise to provide advanced treatment for other neurodegenerative diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and essential tremor.
Rune Labs’ achievement and growth
Rune Labs has been constantly working on enhancing its portfolio and finding new sources of growth. In 2022, it:
Received FDA clearance to use Apple watch to track Parkinson’s symptoms:
The Apple Watch is a consumer-friendly wearable device that can capture a range of Parkinson’s-related symptoms, including tremors, dyskinesia, sleep, gait, and heart rate variability. This data can provide additional insight into a patient’s health and can be integrated with other data sources to help clinicians tailor treatment plans.
Expanded its wings in Europe with the Launch of a Portuguese Subsidiary:
The Portuguese team will research and incorporate the Parkinson’s patient experience into StrivePD and work with the engineering and neuroscience teams to co-develop solutions that meet the needs of researchers, clinicians, and patients.
Collaborated with Medtronic to better understand the effects of neurostimulation and improve patient care:
The collaboration will use Rune’s software platform to integrate, analyse and display data from Medtronic’s Percept PC Neurostimulator, StrivePD Apple Watch application and other sources. Rune’s software will provide participating clinicians with access to a holistic view of the data and deliver data from Medtronic’s neurostimulation device to support patient-specific treatment decisions.
The start-up also has raised over $29 million in funding, with DigiTx Partners and Eclipse Ventures being their most recent investors.
New waves in precision neurology, powered by brain data
Rune Labs may seem like a simple brain data platform, but there is much more to it than what meets the eye. It can become an invaluable tool for clinicians and life sciences companies to monitor brain health and overall health aspect on a deeper level and also analyse lifestyle patterns.
Rune Labs has the potential to make an advancement in brain diagnosing systems. Let’s wait and watch how it enhances the health tech space.
