Federal regulators have given Neuros Medical Inc. permission to test its technology on 130 patients suffering from chronic amputation pain. The Willoughby company has received an Investigational Device Exemption from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that will allow it to implant those patients with its Altius System, which is designed to block nerves that…
Five Cleveland biomedical research and health care institutions have received a $1 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), one of the National Institutes of Health, to collaborate on developing the Cleveland Stroke Clinical Trials Regional Coordinating Center. Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine will administer the five-year grant…
After decades of research and development in neurostimulation technology, Ohio is riding a national commercialization wave in neurodevices. Neurostimulation, also referred to as electrostimulation, uses electricity as an alternative to drug therapy. Treatment applications include relief of chronic pain, paralysis and depression. There are approximately 725 persons currently employed in Ohio manufacturing industries related to…
Most translators are language specialists. They change ancient Greek into English, or English into Mandarin, or speech into American Sign Language. Emily Hromi and Erika Woodrum are translators, too, but of a very different kind: They are artists who change complex and vitally important medical information into imagery that the average person can easily understand.…
The Ohio Third Frontier Commission has awarded $6 million to two teams led by Case Western Reserve University that are developing new medical technology, as well as more than $1 million in other awards meant to support high-tech projects and internships in Northeast Ohio. The first CWRU team received $3 million, which it will use…
CWRU Study of BrainGate Could Help Paralyzed Patients Regain Movement A group of engineers at Case Western Reserve University, whose goal is to help people with paralysis regain the use of their limbs, is launching a clinical trial to study a system that will measure how these people’s brains communicate movement. The system,…
Financial planner Scott Fessler was a highly energetic, athletic young father when at the age of 33, he was in a near-fatal motorcycle crash. Scott suffered fractures to his cervical vertebrae, resulting in paralysis from the neck down. Immediately after the July 2006 accident, Scott underwent spinalsurgery to fuse his C4-C6 vertebrae. He suffers chronic…
When potentially game-changing medical discoveries don’t fit easily into a standard business model, they can languish in a netherworld of limbo known as the Valley of Death. The term refers to the gap between a drug or medical device that holds promise for patients and the resources required to bring it to market. Recognizing their…
Bob Veillette will never move again. But that does not mean he will never again grab a cup of coffee. The technology that may allow him to do that, called Brain Computer Interface or BCI, produces results of an almost Biblical level: it can allow the deaf to hear, the blind to see and the…
Bob Veillette was alert. A thick ribbon of gauze coiled around his shaved head. Underneath the bandages lay the teapot-like spout that researchers hope would be the channel that would capture Veillette’s neural signals and allow him to move a cursor across a computer screen just by imagining it. As Veillette, former managing editor of…