[blindza] Optobionics etc.
- From: "Jacob Kruger" <jacobk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "BlindZA" <blindza@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 09:34:40 +0200
---original message---
Subject: The promise of microchip medicine
Buffalo News, NY, USA
Sunday, July 15, 2007
The promise of microchip medicine
By Andrew D. Smith
Small computer chips are making a big impact on human healing
Updated: 07/15/07 7:42 AM
Quote: "Camera glasses send video to a computerized belt, which translates
digital images to electrical pulses for the brain. Patients today see blocky
images that evoke early video games. It's enough to navigate everyday tasks,
though, and improvements are in the works."
The first bites of pizza fall into your eager stomach. All feels great,
until you grab that extra slice and your gastric pacemaker awakens. The tiny
device,
which doctors sewed onto your gut, watches what you eat. Whenever you
overindulge, a faint shock makes you too ill for more.
Science fiction? No. The gastric pacemaker exists, and it's just one of many
medical prototypes that run on microchips from Texas Instruments.
The Dallas-based company, which grew rich by planting tiny devices in
machines, hopes to grow richer by planting them in you. It also hopes to
heal many
ills and enrich the Dallas area, where existing centers for medical research
and mobile computing may spawn a medical computing hub.
"The potential is incredible," said TI chief executive Rich Templeton,
explaining his company's plans for medical technology at a recent
conference. "We're
talking projects like restoring sight to the blind."
Indeed, researchers at the University of Southern California can already
make blind patients "see."
Camera glasses send video to a computerized belt, which translates digital
images to electrical pulses for the brain. Patients today see blocky images
that evoke early video games. It's enough to navigate everyday tasks,
though, and improvements are in the works.
The improving tie between tissue and silicon also underlies a new generation
of artificial limbs.
Scientists at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have attached
a mechanical arm, one wire per nerve, to a volunteer's shoulder. The man can
now use his mind to move fingers, hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder. The
device still lacks the control needed for pro sports or safecracking, but
it's an
honest-to-goodness bionic arm.
"The cells sit right on top of the chips and talk to one another," said Dr.
Dennis Stone, vice president for technology development at the Dallas
hospital
and research center. "We're at the dawn of something huge, and Dallas is
right in the middle of it."
The promise of microchip medicine lies not only in bionic body parts, but
also long-term care for chronic problems.
The same TI chips that turn plastic boxes into cell phones can also turn
pacemakers into cell phones.
Prototype devices already reduce arduous office visits by sending
information directly from a patient's chest to a doctor's computer. A smart
pacemaker
may someday sense a pending heart attack, call 911 and use a built-in global
positioning system (GPS) device to guide medics to a patient in crisis.
Other chip-based devices may prevent that heart attack from ever happening.
Engineers have used TI chips in prototype systems that constantly measure
blood pressure. When readings get too high, the system zaps the gland that
expands
blood vessels during exercise. When blood vessels expand, blood pressure
decreases.
Drugs can also cut blood pressure, of course, but current medications sedate
patients and produce other annoying side effects.
Smart implants may produce fewer side effects when treating many conditions
that drugs treat today. Blood thinners, antidepressants, painkillers: Those
and other drugs work by affecting chemical levels inside your body. Smart
mechanical devices, in theory, could eliminate the imprecision by telling
your
body exactly how to fix itself. In theory.
To date, the total annual sales of medical microchips by all companies is
just $2 billion.
Texas Instruments estimates it generated less than $200 million of its $14
billion revenue, but the potential market is enormous.
The world market for medical devices is $100 billion and growing by
double-digit increments as machines do more and more. World drug sales
exceeded $600
billion last year.
Medical devices face fewer regulatory hurdles than drugs. TI hopes to cut
the lapse between great idea and marketed product to three years. It seems
an
eternity to computer researchers but an eye blink compared with drugs, which
generally take more than a decade to reach pharmacy shelves.
"Devices offer much faster time to market than pharmaceuticals," said Mir
Imran, chief executive of InCube Laboratories and a major backer of the
gastric
pacemaker. "Today's new devices will be helping patients when today's new
chemicals are still many years from government approval."
http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/119908.html
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