Brain Resource Company signs with IBM

Sydney-based Brain Resource Company (BRC) has signed a business partner deal with IBM to tie up its innovative Integ Neuro series of cognitive performance tests to IBM's integrated Countertop kiosk input devices.

"This deal means we will be able to deliver totally standardised, fully automated cognitive psychological testing, anywhere in the world within four weeks," said Dr Evian Gordon, BRC's CEO.

Gordon said the deal was initially for three touchscreen-operated kiosks, but that there were "a hell of a lot on order" to cope with expected demand for the service, which can be used for the detection of indicators associated with the early recognition of Alzheimer's disease.

The Integ Neuro system uses a specially designed interface combined with a set of task instructions that allow the tests to be applied to subjects from anywhere between eight and 80, with no restrictions imposed by the subject's computer knowledge -- or lack of it.

This approach also allows automated consistency in administration of the tests, and reporting too. The resulting data is transmitted by secure line to the BRC central analysis facility for processing and for each individual assessment.

The deal also sees IBM and BRC becoming business partners, with IBM equipment being used throughout BRC's work environment. This includes enterprise-wide use of IBM's DB2 Universal Database platform, which is intended to facilitate greater scalability and performance reliability as the data store and analysis demands grow.

Gordon described the association between the two companies as very interesting, and noted the computing giant had already signalled moves towards developing an 'autonomic computing' model -- one which had several obvious parallels to the work BRC was currently engaged in.

"The idea that they should tap into our expertise was not a lynch pin of the agreement, but there is no doubt that some of the expertise and ideas we have will filter back into the IBM camp," he asserted.

The agreement sees IBM agreeing to cover other non-equipment based areas such as seed funding for marketing drives, and allowing access to what Gordon described as "the very highest levels of technical expertise" in order to facilitate technology transfer and cutting-edge implementation of systems.

"There certainly is the potential there for IBM to work with us in the programming areas, and they are making all the right noises," he added.

Despite the new capability, Gordon affirmed the company would stick to its guns with the collection and analysis of data from its worldwide network of franchised brain function labs.

"We won't get distracted by contract work, and will continue our direction down the human-computer interaction road. The market is moving towards understanding the brain, and we fit neatly into that human/computing space. We shall be sticking to brain data related work," he said. One area BRC will be pushing is the increasing use by clinicians of the Alzheimer's detection tests, a market described by Gordon a having "a very large potential market".

He admitted that brain data research had previously been dwarfed by higher profile genome research, but maintained the research world's attention was now shifting. "The two are not mutually exclusive -- we see the brain as a system, one that can incorporate genome outcomes too," he said.