VIDEO: Cognetivity Neurosciences Ltd’s (CNSX:CGN) Dementia Diagnostics

Cognetivity Neurosciences Ltd (CNSX:CGN) (FRA:1UB) CEO Dr. Sina Habibi demonstrates the company’s new diagnostic technology designed to detect dementia before symptoms manifest in a patient. Cognetivity’s product was created to assess the brain objectively using artificial intelligence and cutting edge neuroscience. Cognetivity’s app tests a patient’s speed, accuracy, and ability to recognize patterns in response to visual stimuli, creating a mental health assessment based on these responses.  Cognetivity envisions its product as part of the annual primary care assessment for patients above 55. Cognetivity believes its product can detect the disease 20-25 years earlier in its life cycle than conventional testing and could eventually be used as a diagnostic tool for similar diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Transcript:

James West:   Hey, welcome back to Midas Letter Live. My guest this segment is Dr. Sina Habibi. He’s the CEO of Cognetivity Neurosciences Ltd, trades on the CSE under the symbol CGN. Sina, thank you for joining me.

Sina Habibi:  Thank you for having me.

James West:   Let’s start with an overview: what is Cognetivity, and what does it do?

Sina Habibi:  We are a software company. We have new technology to detect dementia, pre-symptom, using artificial intelligence and cutting edge neuroscience.

James West:   Okay. And so when you say ‘cutting edge neuroscience’, what do you mean by that?

Sina Habibi:  It’s means it’s a spin-out from Cambridge University, very recent breakthroughs in neuroscience that’s helping us to understand the brain a lot better than we used to do. And that gave us a tool to work on this solution.

James West:   Okay. So specifically, what was the range of afflictions that can be identified using your technology?

Sina Habibi:  The first focus is on dementia, because we know that there is a huge problem with it at the moment –

James West:   See, I forgot you said that. I’m clearly demented. No, but continue. So dementia, Parkinson’s?

Sina Habibi:  Yes. So we know that, at the moment, we are very focused on dementia and Alzheimer’s, but we are not limited to that, because what we have is a brand new approach to assessing mental health, a completely objective assessment of the brain which is not done before.

James West:   That sounds frightening to me. But tell me, how does the test work? How is it differentiated from what exists today?

Sina Habibi:  So far, we’ve been focusing on memory, but what we’ve done at Cognetivity is to take memory completely out and work with something which is called image cognition – how we perceive images. When we look around, our eyes captures information in the form of images, and our brain constantly analyzes that information and tries to understand what’s inside them. That’s the brain functionality that we are focused on, which is a lot more objective, a lot more sensitive. The research, basically, coming out from multiple centres around the world saying that that’s the first part of the brain hit by the disease.

James West:   Okay. And so what is the advantage to the patient of early detection, except for the obvious?

Sina Habibi:  Very, very important advantages to know it early. First, like any other problem, the earlier you know, the better chances you have to tackle it. There are treatments in the form of medicine, as well as non-pharmacological treatments such as brain training, such as lifestyle changes that you can make, that can give you a better brain health for a longer time. The brain is like a muscle; the more you train it, it becomes stronger, and it goes for longer being healthy.

James West:   SO how much sooner in the life cycle of the disease can your technology detect its presence relative to conventional abilities now?

Sina Habibi:  We think 20, 25 years earlier than is done today.

James West:   Oh, really?

Sina Habibi:  Yes.

James West:   So chances are, if I was having the early stages of dementia, you could tell, using this test?

Sina Habibi:  The plan is to use this as an annual checkup for people above 55, and it’s taken every year. As soon as there’s abnormalities, we can do further assessment to see if there is a problem.

James West:   Okay. Can we do the test now?

Sina Habibi:  Absolutely.

James West:   Great.

Sina Habibi:  So this is how it works: our artificial intelligence looks at your electronic health records, and if you are at risk based on your age, level of education, gender, etcetera, etcetera…

James West:   Lifestyle habits?

Sina Habibi:  Yes.

James West:   Uh-oh.

Sina Habibi:  That’s very important. It looks into it and says, okay, this person might be at risk. The test is prescribed for you before you go and see your doctor, so this does not require an expert; it doesn’t require a doctor to run it, which is hugely important for health care providers.

James West:   So I could do this myself at home on a regular basis and see any signs of change?

Sina Habibi:  Not exactly, because that’s a health product. As soon as you put medicine in front of a product, then it has to be regulated, it has to be in the clinical environment. We have a health product which is in our pipeline, which is going to come out soon, but you can use it as a mental health, basically, monitor. But this is a medical product, so it needs to be in a clinical environment; but, it does not require a doctor. So a nurse can even give this test to you. It’s a very simple instruction that you can do through it, and the demo version, so don’t worry about the test result.

James West:   Okay, so it’s an app that I go through and I fill it out myself?

Sina Habibi:  Yes.

James West:   Okay.

Sina Habibi:  So I’m going to give you this, and I try to make you comfortable with the test, but it’s basically minimum intervention required at my end.

James West:   Okay. Interesting. Year of birth. Boy, it doesn’t go back that far. So I guess it’s important to be truthful; you don’t want to make yourself sound better, look better than you are. Eyewear – oh well, it depends on what I’m flying. Required for reading – well, it’s not that it’s not required. Well, we’ll go with ‘not required’. Very good. During the test, I will see a series of images flash by. That’s scary. Whoa. When they say ‘flash by’, they weren’t kidding. ‘Pay attention’, I guess, is what they’re trying to say! After each sequence, if you saw an animal, tap on the right – well, I don’t even know what I saw there, because I was reading the instructions.

Sina Habibi:  Be careful; speed is very important, and we’ll explain to you why, later.

James West:   I did not see an animal.

Sina Habibi:  So, if you see an animal, you press on the right as soon as you can, and if you don’t, on the left.

James West:   You need to be quick, so it’s best to use both – okay.

Sina Habibi:  Speed is very, very important.

James West:   Right. Interesting. The test will begin – oh, I see. Okay.

Sina Habibi:  This was an instruction sofar.

James West:   Okay. So I didn’t see an animal. Didn’t see any animals. Oops, saw an animal ther e- don’t know what it was. Oops. Ooops. [laughter] This is crazy.

Sina Habibi:  It’s designed to be very sensitive and tricky.

James West:   Okay.

Sina Habibi:  Because our brain tricks us.

James West:   Right for animals, left for no animals?

Sina Habibi:  That’s correct.

James West:   Okay. Be as quick as I can. I get the sense that it’s criticizing me right now; no animals. No animals.

Sina Habibi:  Well, there’s an AI engine inside which reads your actions.

James West:   I see. “Be as quick as you can” is flashing again. I guess I’m a little slow – oh, I just missed it! I’ll go no animals. Oh, there was an animal. There was one. There was another one; it looked like a herd of animals. That was a house. That was an insect. Nothing. Cheese – nope, that’s definitely not an animal, though it’s from animals. No animals. Saw that. Snake. Nice try. Oops. Saw the bird. Dog. This is fun! Okay, so this is essentially – uh-huh. The essence of what the – oh, I see. So it’s measuring my reaction time and my ability to identify anomalies in a pattern.

Sina Habibi:  That’s correct. Absolutely.

James West:   I see. Okay, this is interesting.

Sina Habibi:  So every image is selected very carefully and characterized mathematically.

James West:   Congratulations, I have completed the test. Please hand the device back. Oh, I see!

Sina Habibi:  You cannot see the result because we don’t want to leave the diagnosis to the patients themselves.

James West:   That’s scary. So you mean, if I am demented, what’s the -?

Sina Habibi:  So, very good. You can see, this is basically the first product, which is going to be a triage at primary care, okay? We have a full analysis that will be provided to the specialist. But at this level, the doctors, whether the patient or the subject is fine – which you are, with your score – or if they are in the basically red zone, which is impaired, or yellow, which is at risk.

James West:   It’s pretty close to the yellow zone, there.

Sina Habibi:  Yeah, it’s pretty good.

James West:   Mind you, I wasn’t paying attention for a lot of it, so…

Sina Habibi:  Two, basically, issues about this: you need to be very focused. So I was distracting you. The whole environment is required. And also, the actual test is around five minutes – 100 images. You saw only 30 images.

James West:   Oh, okay. That was just a demo model.

Sina Habibi:  It was just a demo, exactly. So at the beginning, people get used to it, and it discards the first 20 images in the actual test because we know people at the beginning are a little bit nervous, a little bit learning, and after that, the result becomes very, very sable.

So this is primary care; the test is taken in five minutes, we give an action plan to the doctor, whether to refer, whether to ask them to come back and take the test in the yellow zone, and whether they are fine, like you are. And when you go to the secondary care, we will give a full analysis with our artificial intelligence feature looks at how you performed over time, or how attendant you were, how you did to basically respond to different types of images. Every image is selected very carefully. The amount of information in every image varies from the other one, so it takes longer for the brain to capture an image which has got a lot of information. Imagine a picture of a jungle with a bird at the corner; it takes longer for the brain to capture all that information and see if there was an animal inside or not, comparing to the background, and there in the middle.

James West:   Well, some of the images where the animal was in the distant foreground, you had to guess if that was an animal, but it just looked like an environment where an animal would be in, so I was like, that’s probably an animal? Is that the process?

Sina Habibi:  Exactly.

James West:   So, interesting! So how many hospitals are using this at this point?

Sina Habibi:  We are at the – basically, we’ve done multiple trials, pilot studies, to show the technology works. We know in theory it works, but we needed to show the clinical community that it works in practice, too. We are running our final trial at a hospital in London called Maudsley Hospital, which has got the biggest mental health clinic. The result of that study will be submitted to the regulators, such as FDA and MHRA in the UK, and upon receiving approval for software as a medical device – we are a regulated medical device. We’re not just an app out there without any regulation.

So at the result of that study will be submitted to regulators, and upon approval, it’s going to be out there to use for hospitals and primary care, so on and so forth.

James West:   Okay. How do you make money with it?

Sina Habibi:  The primary care product, which I just showed you, at the triage level, is going to be charged per test. So at every test taken, there is a charge for the providers and payers. But secondary care, where they use it as a full-on analysis, again, it’s charged per test, but the house product that I mentioned, where you can do it at home, we have a prescription model for that. You can prescribe for it, sorry subscribe for it; for basically annual fee, you can access to it at any time that you want.

James West:   All right, that’s a great introduction. We’re going to leave it there for now. We’ll come back to you in a couple of quarters and see how the company is progressing. Thank you for joining me today.

Sina Habibi:  Thank you for your time.

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Original article: VIDEO: Cognetivity Neurosciences Ltd’s (CNSX:CGN) Dementia Diagnostics

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