Education May Help Epilepsy Patients Avoid the ER

Educational materials have the potential to reduce costly emergency room visits according to a new study. Researchers from the University of Oklahoma provided handouts and a DVD to epilepsy patients at an adult neurology clinic. They found that emergency room visits were significantly less frequent according to self-reported data following the intervention. Although the study did not use a control group who received no outpatient materials, these findings suggest that patient education may be a tool to reduce health-care costs for people with epilepsy.

Read the full article:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1525505014005794

Crowdsouring Leads to Improved Seizure Prediction

Improved accuracy in seizure prediction could lead to a better quality of life and more independence for people with epilepsy.  A new algorithm that that can predict seizures with up to 82% accuracy has been developed from a crowdsourcing competition hosted by the American Epilepsy Society. By soliciting contributions from a “crowd of users”, teams were able to analyze a huge data set to develop the prediction equation. The success of this data sharing and collaboration has spurred the National Institute of Health’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to launch a site (iEEG.org) to facilitate the sharing of epilepsy related data, algorithms and research tools.

Read more here:

http://directorsblog.nih.gov/2015/01/20/epilepsy-research-benefits-from-the-crowd/