Measuring the brain without drilling the skull is the ambition of CoMind, a British HealthTech founded by James Dacombe, which has established itself as one of the most striking symbols of the convergence between photonics, artificial intelligence and precision medicine. By replacing invasive probes with light, the startup is redefining how clinicians can access brain activity in real time.
The end of intracranial sensors?
For decades, neurological monitoring has relied on devices implanted directly in the skull, allowing intracranial pressure and cerebral blood flow to be measured. These techniques, although effective, are associated with infection risks and high costs. CoMind offers a radical alternative with a device, called CoMind One, which uses a low-power laser beam to capture light signals passing through brain tissue. By analyzing variations in diffusion and absorption of light, the device reconstructs precise physiological indicators, comparable to those obtained by surgery. This approach opens a new way for monitoring patients with head trauma, stroke or neurodegenerative pathologies, without resorting to invasive intervention.
A technology at the crossroads of photonics and neuroanesthesia
CoMind’s innovation draws on recent progress in photonics applied to biology. These advances make it possible to extract functional information from human tissues using light, without disrupting their integrity. The challenge, long considered insurmountable, was to distinguish useful signals from the biological noise generated by the complexity of the brain.
By combining photonic analysis with machine learning models, CoMind is able to translate these signals into data that can be used by clinicians. Immediate applications concern neurosurgery, anesthesia and intensive care, where continuous monitoring of the brain remains essential but too often limited to large hospital centers.
An industrial shift supported by European investors
With its fundraising of 51 million euros, led by the Plural fund with the participation of LocalGlobe, Latitude, Octopus Ventures, Crane, Angelini Ventures and Lord David Prior, Comind brings its total funding to more than 85 million euros.
This massive financial support illustrates a strong comeback for medical hardware in Europe. After a decade dominated by software, HealthTech is refocusing on physical devices, capable of producing high value-added data for artificial intelligence algorithms.
Towards the standardization of the digital brain
Beyond the clinical promise, the issue is industrial and scientific. Devices like CoMind One record a lot of data and each monitoring session produces a set of data on human brain functioning in pathological or surgical situations. This data, aggregated and analyzed by AI models, could ultimately form the basis of personalized medicine, where each therapeutic decision is based on a unique neural signature.
The company has already signed a commercial collaboration with GE Healthcare in the United States and is preparing clinical trials for approval by the Food and Drug Administration by 2027.
