Brothers back 15-minute concussion blood test

A Sydney health technology company backed by brothers Gary and Greg Cohen is working with Monash University scientists on a finger-prick blood test that could tell a coach, medic or paramedic within minutes whether a knock to the head has injured the brain.

Inventive Health Solutions is developing a portable test that would take a sample on site and return a result in under 15 minutes, with no laboratory and no hospital equipment.

At present there is no objective test at the point of injury. The usual response is to escalate to be safe and send the player to hospital for a CT scan, though research published in The Lancet shows more than 80 per cent of CT scans in mild head injury find nothing clinically significant.

IHS executive chairman Gary Cohen, who founded iSOFT Group, said the test grew out of the company’s earlier work.

“The work IHS did during COVID developing a point-of-care test has led us to this one,” Cohen said. “Following recent FDA clearances, we are developing a test to detect the proteins the brain releases when a mild traumatic brain injury occurs.