Neurotechnology · Bioelectronic medicine
BIOS Health
A Cambridge company that set out to build a plug for the nervous system and now sells software that tunes nerve stimulation. The dosing work is published in pigs. There is no device clearance and no trial of its own.
A USB port for the body
In August 2018 a small Cambridge company explained itself to Forbes in a single sentence. “We’re building what is essentially a USB port to allow communication with the nervous system,” said Emil Hewage, its chief executive.
The company was then called Cambridge Bio-Augmentation Systems, and the plug was literal. Its first product was a Prosthetic Interface Device: an implant at the end of an amputated limb that any prosthesis could clip into. In December 2018, announcing a $4.5 million seed round led by Real Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures and the angel Ariel Poler, TechCrunch reported that the device was about to enter clinical trials.
It did not. No trial of that device appears in any public registry. In January 2019 the company became BIOS Health and changed what it sold. The implant went away. What stayed was the hardest part: reading a nerve while you stimulate it, fast enough to act on it.
The problem it works on now
Vagus nerve stimulation is an old, approved therapy. A pacemaker sized device wrapped around the nerve in the neck treats drug resistant epilepsy and depression. It works for some people and not others, and nobody can say in advance which. Part of the reason is dosing: the stimulator has many settings, and clinicians turn them up slowly while watching for side effects. BIOS puts numbers on this. By its account it takes 12 months for an epilepsy patient to reach a target dose, and one in four never gets there. Those figures come from the company, not a cited study.
The BIOS answer is to stop guessing. Record the nerve and body response during surgery, feed both into a Bayesian optimiser, and let the algorithm search the parameter space. The product is called NeuroTune, and the company says it settles on personalised settings in under ten minutes.
Two founders and a corporate director
Hewage, a computational neuroscientist, and Oliver Armitage, a biomechanical engineer, both came out of Cambridge University and incorporated the company on May 5, 2015. They went through Y Combinator in the winter 2017 batch. The advisory bench is serious: the Oxford professors David Paterson and Tim Denison, and Joanne Hackett of IQVIA, who chairs the board.
The UK register tells a flatter story. Armitage resigned as a director of BIOS Health Ltd on August 5, 2024, and Hewage is not listed as a director of the UK company at all. The officers are a corporate director, Cambridge Applied Research Ltd, at the same Cambridge address, and Krishna Kumar Gupta, appointed on December 5, 2024 from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The accounts name the controlling parent as Cambridge Bio-Augmentation Systems Inc, of Wilmington, Delaware. The company has reported no persons with significant control since March 2017 and has no charges against it.
The NIH years
The validation BIOS can point to is American and federal. NIH RePORTER records award OT2 OD030536 to BIOS HEALTH LTD, with Armitage as principal investigator: $859,337 in fiscal 2021 and a $525,696 supplement in fiscal 2022, $1,385,033 in all, to map neuromodulation parameters for the Common Fund SPARC programme.
In July 2022 BIOS was one of eight Phase 1 winners of the SPARC Neuromod Prize, worth $100,000. That October the University of Minnesota was awarded $21 million to run REVEAL, a study of what vagus nerve stimulation actually does across the human body, and BIOS was named as a company partner supplying software.
The prize track stopped there. NIH named four Phase 2 winners in February 2024; BIOS was not among them, nor among the finalists who presented in December 2025.
What the filings show
BIOS Health Ltd files small company accounts, unaudited, and they are the clearest independent measure of the UK operation. Average headcount ran 23 in 2021, 29 in 2022, 25 in 2023 and 16 in 2024. Cash at bank was 453 pounds at the end of 2024, against 96,959 pounds a year earlier. Net liabilities reached 14.41 million pounds, of which 13.69 million is owed within the group. The directors say the company will keep receiving financial support from the parent.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| FDA record | No 510(k) and no PMA found for BIOS Health, Cambridge Bio-Augmentation Systems or NeuroTune as of September 22, 2026. NeuroTune is sold as software, not as a cleared device. | Public record |
| Registered trials | No trial sponsored by BIOS is registered anywhere. REVEAL, NCT06143293, is sponsored by the University of Minnesota: started Dec 15, 2023, estimated enrolment 144, active and not recruiting, completion estimated Aug 31, 2027. | Public record |
| Peer reviewed dosing results | Two 2024 papers, written almost entirely by BIOS staff. Berthon and colleagues in Bioelectronic Medicine studied ten female swine under anaesthesia. Wernisch and colleagues in the Journal of Neural Engineering ran the optimiser in porcine subjects. Both are animal work. | Public record |
| First in human data | In July 2022 the chief scientific officer said human data was scheduled within the year. Nothing from BIOS has been published or registered in the four years since. | Claim outruns the record |
| Grants and prizes | NIH OT2 OD030536, $1,385,033 across fiscal 2021 and 2022. Neuromod Prize Phase 1, $100,000, July 2022. An Innovate UK grant of 100,000 pounds, reported in 2019. | Public record |
| Neuromod Prize progress | One of eight Phase 1 winners. Not among the four Phase 2 winners of February 2024, and not among the Phase 3 finalists of December 2025. | Public record |
| Scale of REVEAL | The BIOS release says “This will be the largest ever single clinical study of human neural data” and cites 150 patients. The University of Minnesota says up to 144 patients and hopes to generate “one of the largest publicly available datasets on VNS function in humans”. | Differs from the sponsor |
| Headcount | The Y Combinator page lists a team size of 45. The UK accounts report an average of 16 employees in 2024, down from 29 in 2022. | Differs from the record |
| Commercial validation | BIOS says NeuroTune “has been validated in a number of therapy areas” and that its neural code is “already in use clinically to enhance data from wearables used in remote chronic disease care”. No customer or revenue figure is named. | Company-stated |
| Spin out | Kordata Dynamics launched May 21, 2026 with pre seed money from MAVRK Celestia Fund, Kern Venture Group and Digital Neural Infrastructure Holdings. Forbes reported that BIOS supplied the core IP and keeps majority ownership. | Independent |
Read plainly: BIOS has real published science, real federal money and a seat on a large NIH study, and no cleared product, no trial of its own and no human dosing result. The method has been demonstrated in ten anaesthetised pigs. That it works in people rests on a promise made in 2022 and not yet shown.
What to watch
- Any human dosing result. REVEAL is the obvious place for one, and its completion is estimated for August 2027.
- Whether Kordata Dynamics, which now carries NeuroTune to clinical sites, names a paying sponsor.
- The accounts for the year to December 31, 2025, due at Companies House by September 30, 2026.
- A first regulatory filing anywhere for software that guides device settings.
In their words
“We’re building what is essentially a USB port to allow communication with the nervous system.”
Emil Hewage, co-founder and CEO, Forbes, 2018 · Independent
“We are focused primarily on these peripheral nerves”
Emil Hewage, Forbes, 2018 · Independent
“The therapeutic approach involves stimulating the vagus nerve while recording from nearby neural and physiological tissues to optimise the stimulations for the patient and their disease.”
Oliver Armitage, co-founder and CSO, company release, 2022 · Company release
“Further preclinical validation tests and first in human data are scheduled for within the year.”
Oliver Armitage, company release, July 2022 · Company release
“The REVEAL study is a major step forward in the new field of bioelectronic medicine which has the potential to completely change the way we treat many diseases related to the nervous system.”
John Osborn, REVEAL principal investigator, University of Minnesota, in the 2022 BIOS release · Company release
“BIOS reminds me of early genomics pioneers, establishing a foundation for a new ecosystem of precision medicines at scale.”
Lord David Prior, former chair of NHS England and investor, 2023 funding release · Investor
“The vision is for high quality trials that recruit in 3-6 months rather than over many years, provide clear data and enfranchise vastly more patients and clinicians in the advancement of medicine.”
Emil Hewage, on the Kordata launch, Fierce Biotech, 2026 · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordBIOS HEALTH LTD company register
- Public recordBIOS HEALTH LTD accounts, FY2021 to FY2024
- Public recordNIH RePORTER award OT2 OD030536
- Public recordNeuromod Prize Phase 1, Phase 2 and final winner announcements
- Public recordClinicalTrials.gov NCT06143293, REVEAL
- Public recordUsing neural biomarkers to personalize VNS dosing
- Public recordOnline Bayesian optimization of vagus nerve stimulation
- IndependentMinnesota awarded $21M to lead REVEAL
- IndependentNvidia team up with Cambridge spin-out
- IndependentBIOS raises $4.5M to further develop its neural interface
- IndependentCambridge startup wins 100k pounds for bionics project
- IndependentA Human Genome Project for the nervous system?
- IndependentBIOS Health raises funds for precision medicine
- IndependentBIOS partners in Californian city
- IndependentKordata launches a neural-focused trial model
- IndependentKordata launches to advance neurotech-powered clinical trials
- CompanyBIOS releases: SPARC, Neuromod Prize, REVEAL, 2023 fundraise, Bakersfield
- CompanyMYndspan and BIOS Health partnership
- CompanyBIOS Health company page, team size and founders
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
