SBIR-STTR Award

Assessing the effectiveness of substance abuse rehabilitation, where high relapse rates create financial and social tolls, is a pressing clinical problem in need of better measurement tools. The ability to identify cognitive changes should improve outcomes but current intake into rehabilitation programs doesn’t typically include cognitive tests. Simple, quick, cost-effective, and objective measures are needed. This is the problem this proposal seeks to address. This proposal utilizes the experience of Evolve Behavioral Health which serve 150 patients weekly, and WAVi, a commercialized brain-assessment platform that combines EEG evoked responses (ERP) with 5 other tests also sensitive to addiction (heart rate variability, physical reaction times, MoCA, Trail Making, and Flanker). This user-friendly platform focuses on minimizing testing times and cost while maximizing information. Our first premise is that adding these tests will help us identify those addicts whose cognitive state requires modified treatment approaches, and this will decrease relapse rates and recidivism rates. Our second premise is that we can create a dataset that can be trained to identify appropriate treatment regimens on an individual basis from the initial baseline test. To date, WAVi data have shown ERP to be highly sensitive to concussion (another cognitive issue) and that artificial intelligence on raw EEG can classify both PTSD and musculoskeletal pain with high sensitivities and specificities. The aims of this project are to develop a scalable EEG-based test for rehabilitation facilities that is readily accessible to clinicians and to create a dynamic data asset to help longitudinally predict outcomes. Accomplishing these aims will assist clinicians on the front lines of substance abuse assessment and treatment.

Public Health Relevance Statement:
Narrative This project will help create an objective and clinically accessible test to be used in substance-abuse rehabilitation programs to assist clinicians in making intervention choices as well as determining the timing of release from rehabilitation.

Project Terms:
addiction; Address; Artificial Intelligence; Auditory; Autonomic nervous system; base; behavioral health; biopsychosocial; Brain; Brain Concussion; Budgets; Caring; Clinic; Clinical; Cognition; Cognitive; cognitive change; cognitive testing; Cognitive Therapy; Consent; cost; cost effective; Data; Data Set; Databases; Detection; Development; Devices; Effectiveness; Electroencephalography; Event-Related Potentials; expectation; experience; Frequencies; Future; Goals; Grant; heart rate variability; improved outcome; Individual; individualized medicine; Inpatients; Intake; Intervention; Longitudinal Studies; Measurement; Measures; Medical History; Modality; Monitor; multimodality; Musculoskeletal Pain; novel marker; open data; Opiate Addiction; outcome prediction; outpatient facility; Patients; Phase; phase 2 study; Photoplethysmography; point of care; Population; portability; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders; programs; Protocols documentation; Public Domains; Publishing; Reaction Time; recidivism; Rehabilitation Centers; Rehabilitation Outcome; Rehabilitation therapy; Relapse; Research; Research Personnel; response; Rest; Sensitivity and Specificity; social; standard measure; Structure; Substance abuse problem; substance abuse rehabilitation; substance abuse treatment; Technology; Testing; Time; tool; Training; treatment planning; Treatment Protocols; user-friendly