Smart Shunts, Smarter Care
For families living with Hydrocephalus, the difference between “okay” and “crisis” can hinge on something invisible: a valve, a tube, a flow that falters without warning. Symptoms can be nondescript and confusing. Traditional shunts save lives—but they also regularly fail, and subtle symptoms can send patients and families into urgent cycles of uncertainty and fear, and possibly the need for life-saving emergency surgery.
That’s what MadSci is determined to change—with its SmartShunt™ Hydrocephalus Management System—a next-generation platform that merges monitoring and management into one smart system.
A system designed for reality
Hydrocephalus affects at least one million children and adults in the U.S. alone—and probably many more undiagnosed. BioSpace+1 Most current shunts face high failure rates: studies report up to ~40-50% within the first year in pediatric cases and ~30% in adults. Mobi Health News+1 What these numbers mean in real life: repeated hospital stays, emergency surgeries, missed school days, missed work, and families experiencing trauma.
MadSci’s SmartShunt is configured by integrating sensors that continually monitor intracranial pressure and flow, and open and close the shunt as needed, reducing clogs and failures that static shunts experience regularly. The system also monitors via the patient’s smart phone, and directly to the clinician, and provides alerts before the failure becomes visible. That shift—from reactive to proactive—is a breakthrough.
“The SmartShunt System is designed to integrate diagnostic and therapeutic functions to enable personalized and informed hydrocephalus management.” — MadSci press release PR Newswire
What this means for patients
Fewer emergency surgeries, meaning fewer nights on edge and more nights of sleep.
Lower cost per patient thanks to fewer complications and shorter hospital stays.
Better outcomes as care shifts from “fix failure” to “prevent failure.”
Scalable impact as neurology begins to catch up to other specialties in terms of monitoring and management.
The Human Side
For a mom waiting worried about her child’s shunt failing, SmartShunt isn’t just tech—it’s a lifeline. For a clinician responding to a potential failure, it’s clarity. For hospitals and payers, it’s a tangible pathway to value: fewer complications, more predictability, and better outcomes.
In a field where innovation has been incremental for decades, MadSci is going bold—with clarity, context and results in its sights.
Beyond hydrocephalus
The MadSci technology has potentially broader applications. The same platform architecture—flow sensing + smart valves + data analytics—can be adapted for other cerebrospinal fluid disorders, traumatic brain injury, and even postoperative neurosurgical monitoring. The thesis: when you can track what matters before it breaks, you stop trouble before it begins.
