BALTIMORE, April 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Neurava Inc., an innovative medtech startup focused on advanced wearable monitoring solutions for epilepsy, today announced that it has been awarded a $4 million NIH Blueprint MedTech Optimizer award to support the development of a Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) risk stratification and forecasting algorithm. The up-to four-year award will enable Neurava to develop, validate, and integrate a first-in-class quantitative SUDEP risk assessment platform, with the goal of advancing to first-in-human clinical trials.

The NIH Blueprint MedTech program is a highly competitive, trans-agency initiative designed to accelerate the development of promising neurotechnology innovations toward clinical impact. Neurava’s selection reflects the urgent unmet need for objective, data-driven approaches to understanding and mitigating SUDEP risk, one of the leading causes of mortality among people with epilepsy.

“This award represents a pivotal moment for Neurava and for the epilepsy community,” said Vivek Ganesh, PhD, Co-CEO & Co-Founder, Neurava. “Despite decades of research, SUDEP risk remains difficult to quantify and communicate in a clinically actionable way. This program allows us to move beyond fragmented risk factors and toward a unified, quantitative framework that can meaningfully inform patient care and clinical decision-making.”

Building on well-established clinical and physiological SUDEP risk factors, Neurava’s work will focus on developing a consensus-driven, quantitative risk stratification algorithm that integrates multimodal physiological signals, including seizure activity, cardiac function, and respiratory function, already captured with its wearable platform. “This effort is about transforming how SUDEP risk is understood and acted upon,” said Jay Shah, PhD, Co-CEO & Co-Founder, Neurava. “Today, clinicians and families often face uncertainty without clear tools to guide monitoring or intervention. Our goal is to provide objective, interpretable insights that can support earlier action and ultimately save lives.”

The Blueprint Optimizer award will support not only algorithm development, but also rigorous validation and integration, ensuring the technology is designed with real-world deployment in mind.

“Achieving consensus around how SUDEP risk is best quantified is a critical next step for the epilepsy field and for patients,” said George Richerson, MD, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Neurology and the Roy J Carver Chair in Neuroscience, University of Iowa. “This effort has the potential to bring together decades of knowledge on seizure, cardiac, and respiratory risk factors into a coherent, reproducible, and clinically meaningful framework. If successful, it could greatly advance how clinicians assess SUDEP risk and lay the groundwork for future preventative strategies.”

This award is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Blueprint for Neuroscience Research and by the following NIH institutes: the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering through grant 3U54EB033650-04S5.

About Neurava
Neurava is an innovative MedTech startup focused on developing cutting-edge wearable technology that can detect and alert for seizures, cardiorespiratory dysfunctions, and stratify SUDEP risk. The company’s unique multi-modal monitoring platform has the potential to dramatically improve the lives of the millions of people worldwide affected by epilepsy. For more information, visit https://neurava.com/.

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