Supporting research into central nervous system (CNS) disorders to improve patient quality of life

Disorders of the Central Nervous System (CNS) affect billions of people worldwide (The Lancet Neurology, 2022), representing an important cause of death and disability around the world. Life expectancy has been extended in the last years which has increased the number of brain pathologies related to aging, such as Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, stroke, and Parkinson’s disease.

Quality of life (QoL) is an important consideration for people living with CNS disorders, as these conditions can have a profound impact on various aspects of an individual’s well-being, such as motor, behavior, social abilities, and cognitive functioning. This not only causes suffering in people that are affected by CNS diseases but also their families, carers and more broadly, the entire community. Prevention, early identification, treatment and rehabilitation of neurological disorders are fundamental.

Cambridge Cognition provides digital health solutions that can improve the detection and the progression of conditions that can affect brain health. Based on over 30 years of scientific validation and innovation, and more than 3000 peer-reviewed papers, our platform offers accurate and sensitive digital cognitive assessments to academic research, drug development, and healthcare professionals.

We offer solutions that can monitor cognitive abilities through touch-screen and free-speech assessments, which can be used at home or in-clinic. Our suite of products includes:

• the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery, CANTAB,

• Speech-assessments,

• Electronic clinical outcome assessments, eCOA, and

• Automated Quality Assurance platform.

CANTAB is a comprehensive battery of well-validated neuropsychological tests that have been extensively used in research and clinical settings.

Based on extensive human and animal neuropsychological literature, CANTAB battery includes different cognitive domains such as attention, memory, executive functions. Below are described some of the points of strength in using CANTAB:

• CANTAB is language independent, and the stimuli employed in almost all our tasks are culturally neutral which facilitates consistent cross-cultural research.
• Tests are adaptive in difficulty to avoid ceiling and floor effects.

Through the years we have built fully automated administration and scoring solutions that are sensitive to biomarkers, disease progression and treatment effect.

Some of our tests have received regulatory approvals and endorsements from various organizations, such as the FDA and the European Medicines Agency, for use in clinical trials and research.

Overall, the CANTAB has been extensively validated and has demonstrated strong psychometric properties (e.g., test-retest reliability, sensitivity and specificity; Egerhazi, et al. 2007; Karlsen et a’ 2020; Lowe and Rabbitt, 1998), making it a widely recognized and trusted cognitive assessment tool.

This ability to adapt the tests to different populations, languages, and research objectives can be advantageous in certain settings.

Our voice assessment solutions allow the collection of richer data, with high ecological validity and the advantage of automated scoring. These types of assessments can provide valuable insights into an individual’s cognitive and neurological functioning. Changes in speech patterns, fluency, and articulation can be indicators of conditions like stroke, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s disease, or dementia.

Our Connect eCOA facilitates the seamless collection, management, and analysis of clinical outcome assessments from patients involved in clinical trials across various therapeutic areas. By leveraging digital platforms, our eCOA solution aims to improve the accuracy, timeliness, and efficiency of patient-reported outcomes (PROs), observer-reported outcomes (ObsROs), clinician-reported outcomes (ClinROs), and performance outcomes (PerfOs).

Compared to pencil-paper assessments, the employment of eCOA technology in clinical studies offer a range of benefits, including:

Improved data accuracy by reducing the risk of missing or inaccurate entries,

• Automated scoring, which saves time and errors,
• Higher levels of compliance, as the assessments can be completed remotely,
• Enhanced participant engagement by employing user friendly interface,
• Greater site personnel productivity by giving real-time access to the data, and
• Streamlined study processes.

All these benefits ultimately contribute to more efficient and effective clinical research that accelerates the delivery of new therapies to patients.

We understand that good quality clinical assessments are fundamental, and that quality review can be time-consuming and expensive. Therefore, we have developed a Quality Assurance platform, AQUA, that would record and automatically review assessment audio to produce high quality data in a more cost-effective way. 

Our speech features (including 700+ metrics such as word classes, vocabulary, tense, sentence length, acoustic properties) and automation make AQUA a novel first-of-its kind Quality Assurance software. Specifically, AQUA is the only technology on the market that can automatically detect not just scoring but also administration errors (e.g., a rater that deviates from the script of a clinical interview). Through a detailed Assessment Report, the AQUA platform ensures trial success.

Our goal is to improve the lives of people with CNS disorders by offering digital solutions, easy to administer. Contact us to discover more about how we can support your study.