Our Experts

“I remember him saying, ‘I can’t believe this happened in front of my family,’ ” recalled his longtime neurologist John R. Pollard, formerly associate director of the epilepsy center at the University of Pennsylvania. Pollard had warned Caldwell that his intractable seizures, which had proved resistant to numerous medications, placed him at risk for sudden death or serious injury.

John Pollard, MD, who is an inventor of the Cognizance Biomarkers technology, a practicing neurologist, Director of the Christiana Care Epilepsy Center and Adjunct Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, commented, "Epilepsy diagnosis can be difficult and slow, with misdiagnosis and suboptimal treatment too often taking years to correct. We undertook development of a proteomic-based blood test to provide an accurate, objective and rapid alternative. Cognizance's first product, the EvoScoreDXTM test, has demonstrated the potential to identify epileptic seizures with excellent sensitivity and specificity. This approach has now been expanded to allow for the accurate monitoring of therapy-associated improvements in the frequency of seizures, which should make it easier to optimize treatment over the lifecycle of the condition."

“We want to help patients who believe they have been over-diagnosed or under-diagnosed so they can see improvement in their lives,” said Neurologist John R. Pollard, M.D., medical director of the new EMU.

Epileptic seizures are difficult to diagnose and are often difficult to distinguish from several conditions with similar presentations, and therefore, diagnosis of seizures is often a long, expensive, and unreliable process.