(Left to right: Leandro Junges and Amberly Brigden)
Principal Investigator: Amberly Brigden
Co-Investigators: Liz Stuart, Phil Tittensor, Peter Kissack, Yasser Qureshi, Rosie Charles, Wessel Woldman, Emily Quilter and Samuel Downes
Centre Fellow: Leandro Junges
Artist: Charlotte Dunn
Lay summary:
Epilepsy is a condition that affects the brain, causing repeated seizures. Epilepsy affects around 630,000 people in the UK. Epilepsy can have a big impact on people’s lives. It puts people at greater risk of injury and premature death, and it can affect people’s social life, work life, and mental health.
People living with epilepsy say that the unpredictability of seizures is one of the biggest problems. We believe that technology can predict when an epileptic seizure is likely to occur. You could think of it as being similar to a weather forecast.
Seizure forecasts could provide people with epilepsy with a forecast about their risk of having a seizure in the near future. This forecasting would rely on us collecting a range of information about people living with epilepsy. Information such as sleep quality, stress levels and what medication they take. These are required as they are well known as ‘triggers’ which increase the likelihood of a seizure happening.
All your data would be used as input to our system. Our system would then crunch the numbers, using advanced mathematics, and output an estimation of how likely you are to have a seizure. Over time, the estimations are likely to get more accurate. As the system gets to know the person living with epilepsy.
