Our Story
The journey begins: a vision
In 1993, Christian Berthomier met an exceptional team: Jacques Prado, who taught signal processing at Telecom ParisTech, and Dr Odile Benoit, a pioneer in sleep research and co-founder of the French Sleep Research Society (SFRMS). They had worked together for almost 20 years on a visionary project; the setup of a semi-automatic sleep analysis method based on a single EEG channel. It is the combination of technology at its highest level of performance and medical and clinical research.
Christian joined this team and it was the starting point for now over 15 years of research and development in signal processing applied to the sleep EEG. He continued with their project and developed the first version of a sleep analysis algorithm, Aseega (Automatic Sleep EEG Analysis); a revolutionary breakthrough in automated signal processing analysing sleep stages from brain electrical activity recorded with only one channel (CzPz). He defended his PhD thesis from Telecom ParisTech in September 1999.
After his thesis, Christian did a post doctorate degree at the U494 unit of the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) to put into place blood speed measurement tools in arteries to anticipate cardio-vascular accidents.
A family business
Christian returned to the sleep field at the end of this experience in 2001 with the idea of setting up a company. He shared his vision with his brother Pierre, an electronics and IT engineer who graduated from the Electric Energy and Information Sciences Engineering School (SUPELEC). Pierre closed the IT company he was running and put his 15 year experience in data processing and network security, full-time into the Physip project.
The brothers are supported by a solid panel of experts: on the technical side, Jacques Prado and Charles Berthomier (their father, professor in signal processing at the Université Paris VII), and on the medical side, Dr Odile Benoit.
The dream becomes reality
The driving factor of the creation of Physip in 2002 was the will to rise to the current challenges of sleep medicine: growing demand, overloaded physicians, development potential in telemedicine and ambulatory testing. Elsewhere, sleep also plays an essential role in numerous other areas of specialisation (neurosciences, cardiology, nutrition, psychiatry, endocrinology etc) but remains difficult to analyse.
The company was incubated at Telecom ParisTech, where it won a number of awards and funding. In 2002 it won the Innovative Start-up Company competition organised by the French Innovation Agency (Oséo-ANVAR) and the French Ministry of Research.
Physip aims to allow researchers dealing with sleep or physicians overloaded by the growing demand, to have access to easy-to-use tools. The ease of use comes from their automation and reliability. The need for only two sensors renders the equipment lighter and reduces the data produced.
Physip is committed to providing a service to science by bridging technological and medical expertise in the domain of sleep and drowsiness.
Sustainable partnerships
Over the years Physip has established partnerships with research and clinical laboratories: centres of technical excellence dedicated to the service of medicine and medical research such as the sleep laboratory of the Department of Physiology and Functional Explorations at the Henri Mondor Hospital in Paris, the sleep laboratory of the Department of Functional Neurology and Epileptology at the Pierre Wertheimer Hospital in Lyon, the Army Institute of Biomedical Research (IRBA), the U821 Inserm research unit Brain Dynamics and Cognition, the Cyclotron Research Centre of the Liège University, Belgium, and the Neuropsychology & Functional Neuroimaging Research Unit (UR2NF), Brussels, Belgium.
Academic recognition
In 2006 the full version of Physip's flagship software product, Aseega, was validated by the Department of Physiology and Functional Explorations at the Henri Mondor Hospital. The results are excellent. They were published in November 2007 by the Journal SLEEP. It was a crucial step which confirmed the recognition, by the scientific and medical community, of the work of the company on the automatic analysis from only two EEG sensors - considered unachievable for many years.
The hard work has paid off and the spirit of partnership and cooperation has brought the project to fruition. Aseega is now being used in sleep linked research domains.
We are very proud of the recent recognition of both the quality and relevance of our work: Aseega technology has been used in a neuroscience research study performed at the Cyclotron Research Centre, Université de Liège, Belgium. This study was performed by Christina Schmidt who was given the honour of presenting her work to the Young Scientist Symposium, at the opening of the European Sleep Research Society (ESRS) congress in Glasgow (JSR 2008;17(suppl.1):YS01). This work has now been published in Science Magazine (Science 2009; 324: 516-519). The use of Aseega is described in the supported online material.
Technology and services
Since 2001, the research and development work carried out by Physip, has led to the development of a comprehensive range of EEG analysis software proposed in different versions adapted to the needs of physicians and researchers.
As a result of increasing demand from its partners, Physip has recently set up a web-based sleep scoring aid service, AseegaOnline. A rapid, reliable and economical service where sleep EEG recordings can be uploaded via the internet using a secure data exchange and an analysis report with numerical analysis results is returned, if needed, in a few hours.
Where are we now?
The story doesn't end here; our range of technology and services continues to expand. Physip is extending its technological know-how into the domain of drowsiness monitoring. In 2006, we won a major research contract with the French Ministry of Defense (DGA) working on the setup of an automatic real-time drowsiness detection algorithm. The project was completed successfully and is now under further development.
Our Team has also expanded; we now have some background in cognitive neuropsychology and additional expertise in polysomnographic technology and quality assurance (GxP). To enrich our use-orientated approach, we now also have competences in social sciences.
We, at Physip, are committed to quality and results that match our determination to provide a useful service to researchers, clinicians and technicians in sleep specific and sleep linked domains.