A brain-computer interface developed by local startup Neural Drive will enter an 18-month clinical trial at Tan Tock Seng Hospital in June, offering stroke survivors and patients with motor neurone disease a way to communicate through eye blinks and focused thought , at a tenth of the cost of existing alternatives.
The idea started in a national service barracks. Khambhati Mohammed Huzefa, now 22, was serving as a medic when he watched stroke patients in acute care struggle to communicate with the people around them , unable to speak, write, type, or even maintain reliable eye contact. Existing assistive tools either required surgical implantation or cost between $15,000 and $25,000 per unit, placing them beyond the reach of most hospitals' routine procurement budgets. Huzefa brought the problem to three peers he had met at hackathons: Kaushik Manian, Nyan Lin, and Raymond Loong Ng, all students or recent graduates of Singapore Polytechnic. Together they founded Neural Drive in early 2025, and built a palm-sized device that costs hospitals $2,500 per unit.
The Neural Drive unit places electrodes behind the patient's ears and above one eye, detecting brainwaves and eye blinks without any surgical procedure. An AI model running on the device interprets the incoming signals in real time, distinguishing deliberate blinks from involuntary movement and mapping sustained concentration to intentional selection. The interface is navigated by blinking twice to scroll through options and focusing attention for a few seconds to confirm a choice. That selection mechanism was designed specifically for patients who cannot reliably maintain eye contact , a population that many existing eye-gaze systems struggle to serve, since those tools assume stable visual tracking that severe paralysis or muscle weakness can disrupt.
The device connects to standard laptops and tablets, presenting a customizable menu of actions: requesting food, turning on lights, watching television, or sending pre-written messages through WhatsApp. YouTube integration allows patients to select and play video content. The menu can be tailored to each patient's daily needs, meaning the interface a stroke survivor uses in an acute ward can evolve into the one a motor neurone disease patient uses at home. TTSH senior principal speech therapist Zenne T'ng said the hospital's goal is to integrate Neural Drive into standard speech therapy practice across acute care, rehabilitation, and home settings, not to treat it as a specialized intervention for the most severe cases only.
\h2>The Trial and What It Will Measure
The 18-month clinical trial beginning in June 2026 will involve approximately 30 TTSH patients drawn from three diagnostic groups: stroke survivors with both speech and physical difficulties, individuals with motor neurone disease, and patients with cerebral palsy. These populations represent a cross-section of the clinical situations where conventional communication tools fail , each condition affects motor control and speech in different ways, at different rates of progression, and with different levels of residual voluntary movement. Running the trial across all three groups will allow TTSH and Neural Drive to collect differentiated data on which patient profiles benefit most, where the interface requires adaptation, and what integration into speech therapy workflows actually looks like in practice.
The team has already conducted preliminary home trials with around 60 users, gathering feedback that shaped the current device iteration. That community testing before the formal hospital trial reflects an approach that larger medical device companies often skip under time pressure , real users in real home environments generate a different set of edge cases than controlled lab settings, particularly for a device that needs to distinguish intentional blinks from the involuntary blink rates that vary significantly between individuals and across conditions. The preliminary trial data also provided the evidence base that TTSH needed to commit to the clinical partnership.
The Cost Problem the Device Solves
The $2,500 hospital unit price is not incidental to Neural Drive's design philosophy , it is central to it. At that price point, TTSH can purchase units from standard procurement budgets without requiring dedicated funding applications, a practical distinction that Zenne T'ng explicitly flagged as meaningful. The pricier alternatives, ranging from high-end eye-gaze systems to fully implanted BCIs like those trialled by Neuralink, require either careful budget planning or surgical infrastructure that most hospitals outside major research centers cannot access. A non-invasive, $2,500 device that works across multiple patient categories is a different kind of product , one that can realistically reach community hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and home care settings rather than remaining confined to specialized neurological units.
Neural Drive has received funding from the Singapore University of Technology and Design and from innovation competition prizes. The founders have also begun conversations with local organizations about donating a thousand units to individuals once the device clears regulatory approval. "At its core, this device is about restoring dignity, and giving people the ability to connect with the people they love," Huzefa told The Straits Times. The clinical trial result, expected in late 2027 if the June start holds, will determine whether that vision scales from 30 TTSH patients to the much larger population of Singaporeans and, eventually, patients globally for whom communication has become the most basic unsolved problem of their daily lives.
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