These Young Innovators Have Created a ‘Fitbit’ to Predict Epileptic Seizures

Truman Pierson and Christopher Fitz are developing behind-the-ear EEG patches and an accompanying app that issues an alert if the user is at high risk for a seizure in the next hour

Ramsha Waseem | Freelance writer

April 28, 2026

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When Truman Pierson’s newborn cousin, Noa, was diagnosed with epilepsy, he had an intimate view of the impact the brain condition had on the lives of his family members. The unpredictable nature of her seizures often left his aunt and uncle unprepared, putting Noa at constant risk.

His aunt shared the endless steps she took to vigilantly monitor her daughter. “She would be up all night waiting for a seizure to happen just so she could capture it,” says 23-year-old Pierson, a recent graduate of economics and computer science from the University of Chicago. She had all the symptoms and information organized into a spreadsheet for the doctor to review, in hopes that he could provide further diagnoses.

After extensive research and conversations with other epileptic patients and caregivers, Pierson and his childhood friend, Christopher Fitz, decided to develop a “Fitbit” to predict epileptic seizures.

Fitz, a 23-year-old graduate of chemical engineering and engineering management at Vanderbilt University, got a sense of the reality of living with the disorder in talking with a mentor at Vanderbilt who experiences infrequent epileptic seizures. “Even though her seizures only happen once every few months, it was still something she thought about daily,” Fitz says. “It was still something she considered when she thought about where she would go if she went to concerts, if she went out with friends.

“That really drove home for us the importance of this type of technology and the general anxiety that a lot of patients live under, even if they aren’t having a physical seizure every day.”

Today, more than 50 million people suffer from epilepsy around the world, making it one of the most common and severe neurological disorders globally. People living with epilepsy are also at a three times higher risk of premature death than the general population, making it one of the top ten neurological conditions contributing to death and disability worldwide. Nevertheless, the World Health Organization estimates proper diagnosis and treatment could help nearly 70 percent of the people living with epilepsy lead a normal, seizure-free life.

“[It] was really important to both of us to not only build cool tech, but for there to be a really strong reason as to why the tech should exist and why it would be useful,” Fitz explains.

The pair spent months brainstorming their prospective device. Should it be a headband with the device placed on the back of the head, or should it be a transdermal patch? They ultimately settled on the latter.

Next, they pondered the best way to make their device as soft and skin-like as possible while ensuring that it was reliable and durable enough to survive real world conditions.

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Electroencephalography (EEG) is a significant noninvasive method used for recording electrical activities in the brain. The test is critical in diagnosing epilepsy and determining the type of the disorder. It also assists in deciding the most suitable treatment for the patient. However, EEG is limited, as it can detect and record a seizure only if it occurs during the test. Moreover, it is conducted by medical experts in clinical settings and can take hours to complete, limiting the patient’s independence.

An epileptic seizure arises following unusual electrical bursts in the cerebrum, a period known as the pre-ictal phase. Several studies have shown it is possible to predict oncoming epileptic seizures hours before the onset, making early intervention possible. While some patients are able to self-predict oncoming seizures, not everyone can. Tools to predict seizures continue to improve, and some have found success with the prescription EpiWatch app available for the Apple Watch. But that app detects tonic-clonic, or grand mal, seizures.

“The limitation with a lot of EEG systems generally is that they’re applied in the hospital,” Fitz says. “They’re only to be used essentially in the hospital; they include a lot of head wraps and extra gels. It’s just a very detailed process to be able to acquire EEG signals.”

The inventors’ aim was to take the general principles of EEG and replicate them in an easy-to-use patch. “We’ve spent a lot of time over the past year primarily making sure that the actual function of the device is correct, that the EEG signal quality we’re getting is sufficient,” Fitz says. It was also essential, he adds, to translate the actual design into something that is flexible, comfortable to wear, and simple to take on and off.

“I think that’s where a lot of development has really come in and what’s taken the most amount of ideas and iterations on our side,” Fitz shares. “We’ve gone through probably 20 or so different versions, testing out different types of circuits or different housing materials.”

Fitz and Pierson founded Theta Neurotech in 2022. The Chicago startup’s model for an epileptic seizure prediction device consists of two simple skin-like EEG patches, each embedded with a battery and worn behind an ear like a sticker. The first version of the product will probably be disposable, while future versions could be wirelessly rechargeable. A little bigger than fingernails, they measure about 15-by-30 millimeters. The patches are designed to conform to the skin and continuously conduct, amplify and transmit EEG signals emitted by the right and left temporal lobes of the brain. These signals are then streamed to a paired smartphone, where an app detects patient-specific changes in brain activity that occur in the pre-seizure period. The app then computes a risk score out of 100 that represents the likelihood of a seizure to occur in the next hour, with a score over 50 considered an “alarm” by the system.

“When the pre-seizure period is detected, the patient and their caretakers receive an alert on their phone, representing heightened seizure risk,” Pierson explains. “At that point, they can get to a safe space, take fast-acting medication and prevent injuries.”

To test if their algorithm could accurately predict seizures, the pair streamed EEG recordings obtained from hospital centers in real-time.

“For the first 27 patients in that cohort,” says Pierson, “we predicted 110 of 123 seizures across those patients.” In this initial study, most alerts came 20 to 50 minutes before the seizure, with the average being 36 minutes. “That’s continuing to change and improve as we make adjustments to the algorithm.”

Pierson and Fitz have raised $2 million to generate feasibility data and fund the remaining research and development. In 2025, Theta Neurotech was awarded $200,000 from the George Shultz Innovation Fund. Managed by the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the program invests in promising early-stage tech startups.

Sandip Pati, an epileptologist and the director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program at the University of Minnesota, considers the technology promising. “Theta Neurotech addresses a growing unmet need in epilepsy care—continuous, real-world seizure monitoring and prediction,” he says.

The device could change the lives of those living with epilepsy and their caretakers. “Real-time seizure risk scoring and alerts could improve safety, reduce anxiety and enable more independent living for patients,” he adds. Moreover, the ability to generate longitudinal EEG-informed reports, he emphasizes, also has the potential to refine treatment decisions, like optimizing medication dosage, and move toward personalized epilepsy care.

While Pati accepts that a wearable EEG patch with integrated analytics is conceptually strong and aligns with the shift toward ambulatory, data-driven neurology, he said its application will ultimately depend on clinical validation, regulatory approval and user adherence over extended wear periods.

“If these are achieved, this noninvasive platform has strong translational and commercial potential,” he says.

However, there is room for improvement. The primary limitation, according to Pati, is that the device uses only four EEG electrodes placed behind the ear, making it easy to miss or inaccurately classify focal or deep seizures. And since seizure prediction remains scientifically challenging, false positives or negatives could impact trust and usability. He also says battery life may interrupt continuous monitoring, and long-term skin tolerability is uncertain.

“Demonstrating robust clinical validation across diverse epilepsy syndromes will be critical but challenging,” he says.

For now, Pierson and Fitz are in the process of launching a pilot, or prospective study of Theta’s system, to measure its performance. From the study, they hope to get real-time feedback from human patients with epilepsy on the performance of the device and its algorithm. “We want to improve the seizure prediction algorithm by increasing the amount of data we use to train it,” Pierson says. “We’ll want to make some tweaks to the mechanical design to make it more comfortable for patients and more durable over the long term.”

Despite its early stage, Theta Neurotech has more than 2,000 patients and caregivers eagerly awaiting its FDA clearance.

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Ramsha Waseem is a freelance writer. Her work has appeared in BBC Travel, Dwell, Atlas Obscura and other media outlets.