Nonconvulsive seizures can kill patients in the ICU. In one study, one-third of such patients died. Yet getting a patient diagnosed with a seizure in the ER or ICU is not easy. It requires an electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures electrical activity in the brain. Getting an EEG can take anywhere between a few hours to a couple of days, since there is a shortage of EEG technicians. Post-pandemic, one study reported that EEGs have declined by 50%.

If a doctor decides to treat a patient proactively without a diagnosis, treatment can be invasive and might mean being intubated and being dosed with benzodiazepines. Taking benzodiazepines prior to an EEG makes it difficult to discern brain wave patterns, further delaying a seizure diagnosis and increasing the length of a patient's stay.

Jane Chao, CEO of Ceribell, wants to help fix this. Chao, who has a B.S. in chemistry from Peking University and a Ph.D. in biophysics from Cornell University, has always wanted to work on a problem with a human impact. She spent a year at film school in search of the human connection, before working at McKinsey and then finding her footing in healthcare.

Chao cofounded Ceribell in 2014 when she learned about the large clinical need for nonconvulsive seizure detection. Ceribell has introduced a portable EEG headset to the market that a nurse or bedside physician can use. It also has an AI that is is trained on a database which has over 800,000 hours of data. In studies, Ceribell's system has reduced ICU stays by four days, shaved 19 hours off of EEG wait times. In addition, 18% of Ceribell patients have had better outcomes compared to controls.