3 ms·

People do realize that this technology is now proven to work, right? And because you can now do everything the wireless way (including the charging part), and u

by nnq 13y ago

People do realize that this technology is now proven to work, right? And because you can now do everything the wireless way (including the charging part), and using off-the-shelf components (you just need to find a subset of components that can be easily "approved for medical use"), and you'll have 99% less risk of infection! Basically the successors of this technology should already be on the market now! They aren't simply because nobody found a way to make a huge profits and medical doctors are too technophobes and/or drowning in other problems that need their immediate attention to afford take risk* and make the effort of begging the government to fund this.

gus_massa 13y ago
This is still unproven. There are only a few (¿one?) anecdotes of the experimental subjects, and they can’t show how amazingly good the result were because the device no longer works. Another comment says that the device resolution was 32x32 (this article says that they see “dots”), it’s much better than a 0x0 resolution, but it’s the resolution of an icon. If you have ever drawn an icon, you’d know that 32x32 is not too much. There are similar device for audition, but the wires don’t go directly to the brain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant Let’s hope that this camera device or a similar device gets fixed until it’s useful in the long term. But it’s important to remember that there are a lot of technical details that need to get fixed, and a lot of clinical test to prove that it’s not a scam, snake oil, an optimistic misrepresentation or any combination of them.
- nnq 13y ago
  To be honest, it was probably a dead-end tech that could've worked, but will probably not be developed because other approaches are kind of safer and worked on by more reputable scientists: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1711/1489.short http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1711/1489... (this one is 38x40, and it's probably easier to get it higher res too :) ) But when it was first tested, it was what seemed to work best, but was abandoned because of the place it was developed in and the (lack of) scientific reputation of the person working on it. The thing with these kinds of things is that you need "proof by engineering and experiment", so if you don't throw money at them before knowing how well they work, you'll never know if they work at all... or you'll never have more than one working technology to choose from. The whole "fund just the best ideas" approach in medical engineering is disastrous imho because the problem space is so huge that you never know what might turn out to work and for what, and at the same time, you obviously can't just do "garage/basement experiments" on these kinds of things, so any equivalent of "wacky garage experiments" actually needs to be funded... this technology was a nice "exploration" of one way to solve a problem.
iskander 13y ago
>And because you can now do everything the wireless way Citation please? That certainly wasn't the case last time I was reading this corner of the research literature (6ish years ago).
- nnq 13y ago
  Don't you have all the needed technologies and pieces in any high end mobile phone? Yeah, there's the electronics for the implanted electrodes, but I doubt they can't be made small enough to be put under the skin. You's basically have a smaller-smartphone sized computer implanted somewhere under the skin (above the pectoral? somewhere else? dunno - just make a larger version of the casing used for peacemakers), with a wirelessly rechargeable battery (existing tech - just google), a subcutaneous bunch of wires going to the implanted electrode (again, tech similar to what you have in current pacemakers), and this will be wirelessly linked to the camera (existing tech - just need to find something low power on the receiving end). If you need more computing power in the loop, you'd have another smartphone sized device in the patients pocket, getting the wireless feed from the camera, processing it and streaming to the subcutaneous one. But wait, you already have things like the Google Glass that have a camera + enough computing power and wireless capabilities baked in, and ready to be mass produced, thanks Google. Going further, when the electronics get low power enough, the wirelessly charging implantable battery (a bit large, and deadly if it ever leaks, but thankfully not hard to safely case/coat) could be replaced with a glucose fuel cell (not yet available, so stick to the battery for now, but doable in the future according to: http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130322/srep01516/full/srep01516.html http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130322/srep01516/full/srep01...). Now yes, none of these are "medical grade" or "medically approved" techs or anything, there is real work in putting them together, and the whole biocompat coating is again existing tech, you just need the expertise of an existing implantable devices manufacturer, but it's "just" a matter of glueing together some existing parts. Take a team of good hw engineers from any telcom company and they'd know how to do it. ...but to be honest, the real solution for blindness caused by retinal damage is probably something like this: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1711/1489.short http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1711/1489... , and since this is probably the best path, it doesn't matter that much this old doc's researches got to an end...

by nnq 13y ago

gus_massa 13y ago

This is still unproven. There are only a few (¿one?) anecdotes of the experimental subjects, and they can’t show how amazingly good the result were because the device no longer works. Another comment says that the device resolution was 32x32 (this article says that they see “dots”), it’s much better than a 0x0 resolution, but it’s the resolution of an icon. If you have ever drawn an icon, you’d know that 32x32 is not too much. There are similar device for audition, but the wires don’t go directly to the brain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant Let’s hope that this camera device or a similar device gets fixed until it’s useful in the long term. But it’s important to remember that there are a lot of technical details that need to get fixed, and a lot of clinical test to prove that it’s not a scam, snake oil, an optimistic misrepresentation or any combination of them.

nnq 13y ago
To be honest, it was probably a dead-end tech that could've worked, but will probably not be developed because other approaches are kind of safer and worked on by more reputable scientists: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1711/1489.short http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1711/1489... (this one is 38x40, and it's probably easier to get it higher res too :) ) But when it was first tested, it was what seemed to work best, but was abandoned because of the place it was developed in and the (lack of) scientific reputation of the person working on it. The thing with these kinds of things is that you need "proof by engineering and experiment", so if you don't throw money at them before knowing how well they work, you'll never know if they work at all... or you'll never have more than one working technology to choose from. The whole "fund just the best ideas" approach in medical engineering is disastrous imho because the problem space is so huge that you never know what might turn out to work and for what, and at the same time, you obviously can't just do "garage/basement experiments" on these kinds of things, so any equivalent of "wacky garage experiments" actually needs to be funded... this technology was a nice "exploration" of one way to solve a problem.

iskander 13y ago

>And because you can now do everything the wireless way Citation please? That certainly wasn't the case last time I was reading this corner of the research literature (6ish years ago).

nnq 13y ago
Don't you have all the needed technologies and pieces in any high end mobile phone? Yeah, there's the electronics for the implanted electrodes, but I doubt they can't be made small enough to be put under the skin. You's basically have a smaller-smartphone sized computer implanted somewhere under the skin (above the pectoral? somewhere else? dunno - just make a larger version of the casing used for peacemakers), with a wirelessly rechargeable battery (existing tech - just google), a subcutaneous bunch of wires going to the implanted electrode (again, tech similar to what you have in current pacemakers), and this will be wirelessly linked to the camera (existing tech - just need to find something low power on the receiving end). If you need more computing power in the loop, you'd have another smartphone sized device in the patients pocket, getting the wireless feed from the camera, processing it and streaming to the subcutaneous one. But wait, you already have things like the Google Glass that have a camera + enough computing power and wireless capabilities baked in, and ready to be mass produced, thanks Google. Going further, when the electronics get low power enough, the wirelessly charging implantable battery (a bit large, and deadly if it ever leaks, but thankfully not hard to safely case/coat) could be replaced with a glucose fuel cell (not yet available, so stick to the battery for now, but doable in the future according to: http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130322/srep01516/full/srep01516.html http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130322/srep01516/full/srep01...). Now yes, none of these are "medical grade" or "medically approved" techs or anything, there is real work in putting them together, and the whole biocompat coating is again existing tech, you just need the expertise of an existing implantable devices manufacturer, but it's "just" a matter of glueing together some existing parts. Take a team of good hw engineers from any telcom company and they'd know how to do it. ...but to be honest, the real solution for blindness caused by retinal damage is probably something like this: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1711/1489.short http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1711/1489... , and since this is probably the best path, it doesn't matter that much this old doc's researches got to an end...