Bioness's Tom LeBlanc on rehabilitating hand weakness or paralysis
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
Release Date: 09/06/2023
Miguel Nicolelis on Neuralink and performing in front of a billion people at the 2014 World Cup
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
Although the is best known for pioneering studies in neuronal population coding, Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMI) and neuroprosthetics in human patients and non-human primates, they have also developed an integrative approach to studying neurological and psychiatric disorders including Parkinsons disease and epilepsy. Top 3 Takeaways: "Every Brazilian kid dreams to play for the Brazilian national team in a world cup game, I didn't quite fulfill the dream, but I got as close as a scientist can get. And we had about 65,000 people in the stadium that day in about 1.2 billion people watching the...
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Kip Ludwig on some of the more controversial neurotech ideas
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
leads the Bioelectronic Medicines Laboratory at the , with the goal of developing next-generation neuromodulation therapies that use minimally invasive strategies to highjack the nervous system to treat circuit dysfunction and deliver biomolecules to target areas with unprecedented precision. Prior to Wisconsin, Dr. Ludwig served as the Program Director for Neural Engineering at the National Institutes of Health. He co-led the Translational Devices Program at NINDS, led the NIH BRAIN Initiative programs to catalyze implantable academic and clinical devices to stimulate and/or record from the...
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Justin Sanchez on going from working at DARPA to helping roll out tech at Battelle
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
is a Life Sciences Research Technical Fellow at but before that he was Director of Biological Technologies office at DARPA. Top 3 Takeaways "You'll never be able to establish your academic career unless you go and move to another place. I'm like, guys, this doesn't make any sense to me. What's most important is to do great work in the field and establish a foundation of the field." "I still had my university job for a couple of years while I was serving at DARPA. And if my time at DARPA and everybody's term-limited at DARPA. When that term ended, I could have gone back to Miami." "I...
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Victor Pikov on starting a bioelectronic medicine company after working at Galvani
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
is the founder and CEO of , a sacral nerve stimulation neuromodulation company and VP of Technology at TRI, Trans Stimulation Incorporated. He also worked at Galvani, a joint venture between Google and GSK as well as working in academia before. Top 3 Takeaways "When you try to speak to potential investors who consider themselves experts in medical devices, they typically fall into three categories: One is no experience with neuromodulation and another bucket is experienced with wearable neuromodulation. And the third very small bucket is experience with implantable class three...
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Daniel Palanker on breaking physics to found neurotech companies
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
is at Stanford University. He has had many successful technologies spun off into companies or patents including those involving retinal prosthetics, optical imaging and spectroscopy, laser-tissue interactions, and retinal plasticity. Top 3 Takeaways "The [size] limitation for a retinal prosthesis is not in a fabrication side. The limitation is an interface with neurons" Allergan acquired Oculeve but then didn't do much with it seemingly because they already had a more profitable drug on the market "Stanford is industry-friendly, encouraging commercialization, basically making things...
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Donna Hamlin, an executive coach on how to be a better leader in neurotech
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
is a corporate executive with thirty years of corporate, governance and strategy consulting experience. She oversees ’s global programs, including its centers and their services. These include: board evaluations, professional certification and training, its global registry of qualified directors, Board Bona Fide®, its strategic partnership programs and its Boardwise center. Top 3 Takeaways "It's really important to know that if we want to be good at our work, then we've got to explore things outside of our normal swim lanes. And when we do that, it gives us a different view or...
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David McMullen of NIH on Blueprint Medtech, the program to help neurotech companies grow
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
is the program officer at the in the National Institutes of Health (NIH). They are launching the NIH Blueprint Medtech (links below) which aims to help incubate growing neurotech companies go from Bench to Bedside. Top 3 Takeaways "We're funding individual projects and trying to help groups in the past have struggled... to get funding and to get all the way to in human trials. The Blueprint Medtech resource is meant to derisk later investment and grants for companies "We saw some great programs... having difficulty when they come in - Can we decrease the activation...
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Jon Speer on how Quality Management Software for Medtech companies raised $120 Million
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
Jon is the founder of (quality management software exclusively for medical device companies) & a medical device guru with nearly 20 years industry experience. Jon knows the best medical device companies in the world use quality as an accelerator. That's why he created Greenlight Guru to help companies move beyond compliance to True Quality. Top 3 Takeaways If it isn't documented, it didn't happen. One particular audit didn't take four days. It took two days because the Greenlight system made it so much simpler. Greenlight Guru also has an academy to teach people about the...
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Dr Aldo Faisal on using eye movements and AI to improve BCIs
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
Professor is the Professor of AI & Neuroscience at the Dept. of Computing and the Dept. of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. His work is in Machine Learning and eye tracking to improve neurotechnologies. Top 3 Takeaways "What we do is we get people to move into our living lab/studio flat and they live their daily lives, and we record everything that they do, how they do, where they look, we record the eye movements, the body movements, and everything." "The more subjects you add to your dataset from different datasets, the worse the performance of the system becomes." A...
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Florian Solzbacher on the $10 million Blackrock Neurotech investment and plans for future
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
is the Co-Founder and Chairman of which has the Utah Electrode Array, the only FDA-approved neural implantable device. Blackrock Neurotech recently closed a $10 million financing round, led by Christian Angermayer's re.Mind Capital with participation from Peter Thiel, German entrepreneur Tim Sievers, and Sorenson Impact's University Venture Fund II. Top 3 Takeaways "In the end, you have to have the drive. It has to be a passion. And then you will find a way because very often in life, you will find that, just when you need it, all that you really need is one door opening at the right...
info_outlineTom LeBlanc is the Marketing Manager at Bioness, a neuroprosthetics and neural rehabilitation technology company born out of the Alfred E. Mann Foundation. Let’s listen in on his interview. He has several years of experience in marketing and communications within Bioness. Prior to joining them he was in the entertainment industry with the likes of Disney and Warner Bros. He holds an MBA from Pepperdine University. Let’s listen to our conversation with him.
Takeaway: Functional electrical stimulation can be used as a neuroprosthetic for everyday tasks or as a rehabilitation device to gain voluntary movement.
[0:00] Ladan introduces the episode with an interview accompanied by Jen French of Neurotech Reports with Tom LeBlanc from Bioness on the exhibitor floor at RehabWeek 2019.
[0:58] Tom introduces himself and his role in Bioness.
[1:08] LeBlanc discusses the legacy Bioness device, the H200, for upper extremity functional electrical stimulation and the target populations. The device has various programs.
[3:05] We move our discussion to the lower extremity device, the L300. LeBlanc describes the devices and the product extensions. It uses functional electrical stimulation with imbedded sensors and smart algorithms.