Finnish health tech startup Neuro Event Labs raises €3.9 million for epilepsy diagnostics

Finnish health tech startup Neuro Event Labs has raised €3.9 million from Hadean Ventures, SHS Capital and Maki.vc to support the commercial expansion of their main product, Nelli, an AI-powered diagnostic platform for epilepsy.

One of the most common neurological disorders, epilepsy affects over 65 million people worldwide. Currently, 30 percent of diagnosed cases are later disproved by new methods, and another third of epilepsy patients continue to have seizures regardless of treatment. 

“To provide optimal treatment, it’s crucial to be able to clearly define the type and frequency of seizures, which often occur during the night. However, a current diagnosis of neurological disorders mostly relies on subjective and unreliable data resulting in a high misdiagnosis rate,” explains Jukka Peltola, who is the medical director and co-founder of Neuro Event Labs as well as a professor of neurology. Nelli relies on video and audio recordings from a patient’s bedside to identify the type of seizure the patient suffers from and then suggest personalized treatment. The system also provides doctors with an cloud-based interactive report that can be reviewed by the entire clinical team. So far the diagnostic is launched for regular clinical use at 20 European hospitals, and used in collaboration with a hospital in the US. With the new funding, the company wants to “become the standard for epilepsy treatment in Europe by 2021” and to expand further in North America. Eventually, Neuro Event Labs wants to expand outside of epilepsy as well. CEO and co-founder Kaapo Annala said the diagnostic technology will be applied to other neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s, Sleep Apnea and Cerebral Palsy.

Photo: Neuro Event Labs co-founders Jukka Peltola and Kaapo Annala