PR: Stardots and Karolinska Institutet Expand Collaboration to Pioneer and Clinically Validate Scalable Digital Biomarkers in OCD

Uppsala, Sweden – April 17, 2026 — Stardots AB today announces an expanded strategic collaboration with Karolinska Institutet (KI) to accelerate the development of Psilmi® – the company’s platform for objective psychiatric biomarkers. The partnership aims to transform the assessment and treatment of Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD) through scalable, biology‑linked digital measurements.

OCD is a severe and often chronic psychiatric condition with distinct symptom dimensions and substantial personal and societal burden. Although its clinical phenotype is well characterized, psychiatry still lacks objective tools to quantify disease activity, detect early treatment response, or guide precision interventions. Current diagnostics rely almost entirely on patient self‑report and clinician interpretation, creating long and uncertain treatment trajectories.

Through this collaboration, Stardots and Karolinska Institutet will work toward establishing the first comprehensive digital biomarker framework for OCD, enabling clinicians to complement today’s subjective methods with fast, reproducible, physiology‑based indicators. This vision builds upon an already strong research foundation between Stardots, KI and Uppsala University, where Psilmi® has demonstrated the ability to reveal objective signatures across autism, ADHD, anxiety, and depression.

Psilmi uses a 15–30 minute eye‑tracking–based assessment to extract around 50 digital biomarkers related to cognitive control, emotional processing, autonomic regulation, social attention, and sensorimotor function. These features align with well‑defined neurobiological systems implicated in OCD and are integrated into clinical workflows to generate standardized and biologically informed profiles.

“OCD demands clinical precision that exceeds what today’s tools can deliver,” says Daniel Petrini, CEO of Stardots. “Psilmi® is built as a scalable measurement platform for psychiatry. It generates consistent, physiology-based data across patients, timepoints, and indications. By expanding our collaboration with Karolinska Institutet, we are advancing the clinical validation of these signals in OCD. This also establishes a foundation for broader use across CNS disorders. Our goal is to support more standardized, data-driven decision-making in both clinical care and therapeutic development.”

Diana Pascal, Senior Consultant Psychiatrist and Associate Professor (Docent) in Psychiatry at Karolinska Institutet, adds:
“After working clinically with OCD for many years, it is clear that the field urgently needs objective measures to complement our diagnostic interviews and rating scales. Psilmi™ has the potential to quantify cognitive, emotional, and autonomic patterns that are highly relevant for OCD but invisible in traditional assessments. By combining Stardots’ technology with Karolinska Institutet’s clinical and scientific expertise, we are taking an important step toward modernizing OCD care. This collaboration gives us an opportunity to build tools that can truly change clinical practice — not by replacing clinicians, but by empowering them with better, biologically grounded data.”

The collaboration is designed to serve long‑term strategic goals, including:

• Establishing the world’s first scalable digital biomarker framework for OCD
• Enhancing diagnostic precision and clinical decision‑making
• Enabling early detection of treatment response and non‑response
• Supporting the future development of personalized and neuromodulation‑based treatments
• Expanding objective measurement into broader psychiatric care pathways

Regulatory note: Psilmi® is currently available for research use only. Regulatory submissions for FDA 510(k) followed by CE marking are planned for late 2027.

For further information, please contact:

Daniel Petrini, CEO, Stardots AB
Tel: +46 70‑782 70 01
Email: daniel.petrini@stardots.se

About Stardots AB

Stardots AB develops software‑based medical devices (SaMD) for neurological and psychiatric disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, autism, ADHD, depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline. Its platforms — ANLIVA®, Psilmi®, and QUEST — use advanced mathematical modelling of sensor data from eye‑tracking, motion‑tracking, and other sensors to deliver objective diagnostics and treatment optimization. The company is headquartered in Uppsala, Sweden, with the United States as its primary target market.
More information: www.stardots.se