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PainQx offers a patented platform for objective, quantitative chronic pain assessment. Its core product uses a mobile electroencephalography (EEG) device to capture brain activity. Proprietary cloud algorithms then process this data, generating an objective pain assessment, addressing the subjectivity of traditional self-reported scales. This system provides clinicians with rapid, data-driven insights.
Founded in late 2014 by Leslie Prichep, PhD, and Frank Minella, PainQx addressed the need for unbiased pain measurement. Dr. Prichep, an NYU Principal Investigator, contributed brain activity research. The founders sought to move beyond subjective patient reporting, often impeding treatment, leading to their innovative EEG-based diagnostic approach.
Clinicians primarily use PainQx for objective pain metrics, aiding diagnosis, personalized treatment, and progress monitoring. The company envisions standardized, data-driven pain assessment for effective chronic condition management. PainQx aims to establish a new paradigm for pain evaluation, improving patient outcomes and clinical decisions.
PainQx has raised $1.0M across 1 funding round.
PainQx has raised $1.0M in total across 1 funding round.
PainQx has raised $1.0M in total across 1 funding round.
PainQx's investors include 10x Investor Club, New York Angels.
PainQx has raised $1.0M across 1 funding round. Most recently, it raised $1.0M Seed in August 2017.
| Date | Round | Lead Investors | Other Investors | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 1, 2017 | $1M Seed | — | 10X Investor Club, NEW York Angels | Announced |
PainQx is an AI/ML-powered medical device company developing the ALGOS System, a platform that objectively measures and monitors chronic pain using EEG data from a patient's brain, processed through proprietary algorithms to generate a scaled pain biomarker correlating to pain states like no pain, mild/moderate, or severe.[1][2][3][4] It serves clinicians and patients in healthcare, particularly those with chronic conditions such as neuropathic pain, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, musculoskeletal pain, and low back pain, solving the subjectivity and inaccuracy of traditional self-reported scales like the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) or Numeric Rating Scale (NRS).[2][3][5] Founded in 2015 as a prototype-ready C-corp with about 6 employees, PainQx has shown growth momentum through a $1.5 million DHA SBIR contract in 2021 for algorithm refinement, multi-site studies, and FDA preparation, building on prior NIDA Phase II awards and a vast EEG dataset from NYU.[1][3][5]
PainQx was founded in August 2015 in New York, NY (with some references to Philadelphia), emerging from research at NYU School of Medicine, where principal investigator Leslie Prichep, PhD, contributed to a 40-year collection of around 25,000 EEG recordings—the largest dataset of its kind, to which PainQx holds exclusive rights.[1][2][5] CEO Frank A. Minella, a serial entrepreneur, U.S. Army Officer, aviator, and former Accenture consultant in pharmaceuticals, self-funded the team for 2.5 years to build an R&D pipeline, partner with experts, and strategize commercialization.[1][5] Key team members include VP of Development William Koppes, ex-CTO at Brainscope (leading EEG-based TBI device approval) and Siemens Healthcare.[1] Early traction came from patented technology for quantitative pain assessment, evolving into the cloud-based ALGOS System with pay-per-use or subscription delivery.[2][3]
PainQx rides the wave of AI-driven precision medicine and digital therapeutics, addressing a massive chronic pain market where 20% of adults suffer but treatments falter due to unreliable self-reporting.[2][5] Timing aligns with EEG tech democratization (mobile, low-cost devices), exploding ML capabilities for biomarker discovery, and post-pandemic demand for objective telehealth tools amid opioid crises and value-based care shifts.[3][4][5] Favorable forces include government funding (DHA SBIR, NIDA), regulatory openness to AI devices, and partnerships with institutions like NYU; it influences the ecosystem by pioneering neural pain biomarkers, potentially enabling personalized therapies, reducing overprescribing, and expanding to multimodal diagnostics.[1][3][5]
PainQx is poised for FDA clearance and commercial launch (targeted post-2022 validation), expanding ALGOS beyond intensity to pain types/modalities while scaling its dataset for superior accuracy.[3][5] Trends like AI-healthcare convergence, wearable integration, and multimodal biomarkers will propel it, potentially disrupting $100B+ pain management with objective metrics for trials, remote monitoring, and insurance.[4][5] Its influence may grow via ecosystem partnerships, positioning PainQx as a leader in neuro-AI medtech—transforming subjective suffering into quantifiable, treatable data, much like its origins redefined pain assessment from NYU's archives.
