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
Jeremy Greenberg on Data Flows and Privacy Risks of Brain-Computer Interfaces
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
Jeremy Greenberg works for the nonprofit and has written . The report is an extensive look into some of the challenges of privacy in the BCI space. Top 3 Takeaways: "A lot of the risks in this base really stem from the fact that neuro data is sensitive personal information. This is biological. It relates to mental privacy. These devices can be used to derive inferences about a person's likes their dislikes, their fears, emotions. So this is, this involves very sensitive and intimate details or inferences about an individual." "I think that the involuntary nature of this data is something...
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Tim Jorgensen on the history of bioelectronics over the centuries up to today
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
Tim Jorgensen is the author of Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life which looks at the history of bioelectrics all the way from prehistory to the modern era. The book is very informative and shows that current neurotechnology has very deep roots. Top 3 Takeaways: "The word electricity comes from the Greek Latin word for Amber. That's where it originally comes from because that was the only way to create it. They would rub Amber with wool and you would get static electricity" "One of these tricks actually was called the flying boy. They would suspend a child from...
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Paul Grand about bringing the world's best ecosystem to the world's best companies with Medtech Innovator
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
is the CEO of which is an accelerator for startups in the medical technology space. It has been going for many years and the companies that they select to go through the 4 month process have gone on to be very successful. Apply for this year's cohort, deadline January 31st Top 3 Takeaways: "MedTech innovator as an accelerator is the world's largest accelerator for medical technology" "1,800 companies applied last year across all of our cohorts. We accept around 4% of that." "Some of the benchmarks we've got: over 90 products in the market, $3.5 billion in follow on funding to...
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Yannick Roy on creating a neurotech community with over 18,000 members
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
is the founder of which is a community of neurotechnology enthusiasts with over 18,000 members from around the world started in 2014. They have also held in-person events to help bring people together. Due to this large community, Yannick has also started NeurotechX Services which brings together this large community to help companies and people. Top 3 Takeaways: "we don't have any outside funding, government funding. We needed to bootstrap everything. The organization was and still is mainly volunteer-driven" three pillars: community, education, and, innovation "More money isn't...
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Marc Russo on running clinical trials in Australia and the INS
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
is the president of the which is a nonprofit group of clinicians, scientists and engineers dedicated to the scientific development and awareness of neuromodulation. Dr Russo runs a large multidisciplinary pain clinic in Australia. He has conducted a number of first-in-man studies of novel neuromodulation implants as well as designing unique leads and waveforms in spinal cord stimulation (SCS). Top 3 Takeaways: "Over more than a 20 year journey now we understand that these patients are best treated early rather than later. The best traded with as close to zero levels of opioids. And that...
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Gautam Sadarangani on the importance of measuring and gamifying physical therapy exercises
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
is the President & COO/CTO of by BioInteractive Technologies, a digital health system that provides a better way to retrain movement for the hand, wrist, and elbow. Top 3 Takeaways: "Our core competence here is the fact that we're able to measure the limb with sufficient accuracy and sufficient resolution for rehabilitation purposes while being very unobtrusive for the person to wear essentially 24/7" "Quantifying and motivating is a big deal. It's not different than when you're trying to lose weight and use a weighing scale. You need those parameters to tell you if you're moving...
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John Doucet on helping companies get FDA approval at MCRA
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
is a neuroscientist and biomedical engineer with 10+ years of FDA experience in medical device regulation, and 13+ years of Johns Hopkins experience in discovery science, and 6+ years of management experience at FDA and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He has extensive knowledge of medical device regulatory pathways to drive technologies from conception to market. Top 3 Takeaways: "That's what clients are paying for, I can detect the signal from the noise and all the stuff the company is doing, bring that to the FDA in a way that they can digest it "Everyone wants breakthrough...
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Ni-Ka Ford on the importance of medical illustration
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
is a that works with both 2D and 3D sketches often in the neurotech space. Top 3 Takeaways: "I was doing an illustration for a procedure. And what happened was the surgeon actually ended up changing his manuscript after seeing my illustration." There are 4 accredited graduate programs for Medical Illustration "When I do something that's more a schematic, I could finish an illustration in maybe a week. More rendered illustrations that are high in details may take me about a month to complete." 0:45 "Can you describe what you do?" 2:45 "How did you get into this?" 5:00 "It...
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Dr Paul Tubig and Dr Darcy McCusker on neuroethics workshops
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
and are graduates from the University of Washington. Dr Tubig now works at at Georgia Southern University teaching neuroethics and is teaching social and political philosophy, bioethics, neuroethics, and philosophy of disability. Top 3 Takeaways: "There have been reports and testimonies of users who have experienced a sense of depersonalization, a sense of alienation and a sense that they are no longer themselves [after using implanted neurotechnology]." "It turns out that when you have an ethicist in the room, you end up asking really different kinds of questions of your...
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Seth Hays pairing VNS with rehab for better patient outomes
Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions
's research focus at the University of Texas at Dallas is enhancing neuroplasticity, or the ability of the brain to change, in order to treat neurological disease. The majority of current studies evaluate the ability of vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), a putative targeted plasticity therapy, to improve recovery in models of motor dysfunction Top 3 Takeaways: "VNS itself is not a thing unto itself. It's really the combination of VNS with the rehabilitation that's producing the effects that we see" "We think this is most effective when there's really some deficit that you have trouble...
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.