Dr. Erika Molteni, Institute of Health Informatics
Engineer and neuroscientist Erika Molteni has spent the past 20 years working to transform how doctors understand and treat children with severe brain injuries and disorders of consciousness.
During an internship at a children’s hospital, Erika realised that assessments for comatose children still relied on old 19th-century techniques such as checking if a child opened their eyes when touched. Since then, she’s sought to update how we diagnose children who display Disorders of Consciousness (when a child suffers severe brain injury).
Her work uses brain signals to detect awareness more precisely than behavioural tests. She also looks at predicting recovery – crucial when children with similar brain injuries may respond very differently to the same treatment. By combining long-term patient data with machine learning and deep learning, Erika’s research helps make predictions for rehabilitation more reliable.
Alongside this, Erika also leads the paediatric arm of the Disorders of Consciousness Task Force at the International Brain Injury Association. Her team has reviewed all available research and is now building an open-source global database of paediatric cases. This resource raises the standard of evidence by pulling together fragmented studies, many of which are too small to be reliable, into one shared platform. The aim is to guide future treatments and establish evidence-based guidelines for children, like those that already exist for adults.
Image credit: IRCCS E. Medea – Bosisio Parini (Italy)
