Unmet Need
Dizziness is one of the most common complaints, affecting approximately 20-30% of the general population. Vertigo, a type of dizziness, is an illusion of movement caused by an asymmetric involvement of the vestibular system. While most cases are clearly due to a benign ear condition such as vestibular neuritis, about 3-5% of the 4.4 million patients present with acute dizziness or dizziness, known as acute vestibular syndrome (AVS), each year in the U.S. due to stroke. As dizziness and vertigo are mostly tightly linked to undiagnosed strokes, a three-part eye exam called HINTS was developed to detect stroke in AVS patients with high accuracy. It is a series of bedside clinical tests consisting of the head impulse test (HI), characterization of spontaneous nystagmus (N), and test of skew (TS). Although the HINTS exam is a validated tool for ruling out stroke in AVS patients with greater sensitivity and specificity than neuroimaging, it is often under-utilized in most emergency departments due to its steep learning curve and intensive training requirement, with most physicians opting for neuroimaging instead. This contributes to a low awareness and adoption of this exam in the emergency department, especially since the accuracy of the HINTS exam was shown via specialist physicians and expertly trained emergency room physicians. Thus, there is a need for a method of making the HINTS exam more accessible to ambulatory or emergency room personnel in order to reduce the amount of unnecessary neuroimaging during the diagnosis process.
Technology Overview
Johns Hopkins researchers developed a smartphone-based HINTS exam to help diagnose patients with vertigo and dizziness. This technology analyzes video recordings of patients during the HINTS exam, guides the patient and physician through the exam, and provides a diagnostic report which indicates whether the test is positive for a possible stroke or negative, suggesting a benign inner ear condition.
Stage of Development
Preliminary study in patients has been done to show proof-of-concept. A new user interface is currently being integrated into the software application.
Patent
US2020/070304
Publication Parker et al.. Digit Biomark (2021). 5:1–8.
