EpiPick: An Anti-seizure Selection Tool Designed by Dr. Ali A. Asadi-Pooya, SUMS Faculty Member of Neurology

Currently, the first-line treatment for treating epilepsy is Anti-seizure Medications (ASMs), and many of which are available to be prescribed for patients. On the one hand, the treatment offers health professionals good chances to tailor medication to each individual’s characteristics. On the other hand, it might lead health professionals to make an inappropriate choice. Professor of Neurology at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (SUMS), Dr. Ali A. Asadi-Pooya, the top-rated expert in seizures in Asia, and his teammates have developed a programmatic algorithm to facilitate prescribing medication for patients whose epilepsy has begun at age 10 or above. This user-friendly algorithm takes only two minutes to complete and offers different treatment options to choose from. Contributing to the epilepsy management, the algorithm will be particularly beneficial to health providers who seek advice or lack special expertise in the field.

It is worth mentioning this algorithm was designed by SUMS Epilepsy Research Center in cooperation with Thomas Jefferson University’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Center in the USA, the Danish Epilepsy Center of University of Copenhagen in Denmark, the Neurosurgery Department of University Hospital Erlangen in Germany, the Neurosurgery Department of the University Hospital Halle in Germany, and the Department of Internal Medicine and Therapeutics of University of Pavia in Italy. The project was furthermore funded by the Danish Epilepsy Research Center and Philadelphia Research Foundation.