Neuroscience technology company Cambridge Cognition PLC has announced a new strategic partnership with ActiGraph that will help speed up the adoption of digital measurements for central nervous system trials.

Cambridge Cognition has joined ActiGraph’s Accelerant partnership programme which is advancing the use of digital health technologies in clinical development by simplifying contract research organisations’ and technology vendors’ access to raw data streams.

The partnership will deliver a broad range of assessments to provide a fully rounded view of mental and physical capabilities. Combining their collective expertise in digital data collection will help enhance assessment capabilities in central nervous system trials in areas where there is a large unmet need, including schizophrenia and dementia.

Christine Guo, chief scientific officer, ActiGraph, said: “Digital health technologies give us the ability to collect data objectively during a patient’s everyday life. This is especially important in CNS (central nervous system) disorders where conventional assessments are prone to subjective biases. We are excited about this partnership with Cambridge Cognition to provide advanced clinical insights to study teams conducting CNS trials.”

Cambridge Cognition offers touch-screen and voice-based digital assessments of cognition and other brain health indicators. Its suite of e-clinical technology solutions can be used in-clinic or at home and gives pharmaceutical companies and research institutions flexibility to reliably capture a range of important clinical measures.

Francesca Cormack, chief scientist, Cambridge Cognition, said: “CNS disorders are characterised by a host of heterogeneous symptoms which impact daily life, but that are often inadequately addressed by existing treatments. Our partnership with ActiGraph represents an exciting combination of expertise in objective digital measures of actigraphy, speech and cognition that will help accelerate the development of treatments for patients and improve efficiency in clinical trials.”

The two companies are responsible for enabling hundreds of research projects every years, through their tech solutions for academic researchers. Now, the combination of actigraphy data and brain health assessments may enable even more accurate multi-modal digital biomarkers in the future.