Speaker 1: Glass, Welcome to tech stuff. I'm care Price. Yes it's Friday,
Speaker 1: but instead of the Week in Tech, we wanted to
Speaker 1: share a conversation I had with Jim Ashworth Beaumont some
Speaker 1: years ago. Jim was clipped by a truck when biking
Speaker 1: and sustained a traumatic injury.
Speaker 2: I was sitting at traffic lights and Lorry basically turned
Speaker 2: as it was leaving the traffic lights, and they caught
Speaker 2: me on the side of the vehicle and dragged me underneath.
Speaker 2: So I was essentially going to get crushed by the
Speaker 2: bat wheels, and I reflexively reached up to the bottom
Speaker 2: of the Lorry and grabbed hold of the underneath of it.
Speaker 2: So I got dragged up the road undre meters and
Speaker 2: my arm got caught under the bat wheels and taken off.
Speaker 1: On top of losing his arm, Jim's lungs were punctured
Speaker 1: and his liver was split in two. He told me
Speaker 1: that the next six weeks were a blur an coma,
Speaker 1: but also in a conscious state.
Speaker 2: I assume that I died and I was I was
Speaker 2: sort of going through between dimensions of experiencing various lives,
Speaker 2: and although in six weeks it seemed like a lot
Speaker 2: longer to me. I was experiencing things physically, by which
Speaker 2: I mean the doctors trying to save my life. I
Speaker 2: was basically having heart attacks like two three times a day,
Speaker 2: so they're kind of jumpstarted me, like continually.
Speaker 1: Amazingly, Jim was able to pull through, and soon he
Speaker 1: was troubleshooting how to live a one armed life. For
Speaker 1: most people, living with a prosthetic or even thinking about
Speaker 1: prosthetics would require a huge mindset shift, But this wasn't
Speaker 1: Jim's first encounter with these devices. After leaving the Royal Marines,
Speaker 1: Jim got a degree in prosthetics and orthotics and has
Speaker 1: worked in a clinical capacity helping patients through pain, function
Speaker 1: and mobility issues for decades. So when Jim needed a
Speaker 1: prosthetic arm of his own, his peers made him their
Speaker 1: guinea pig of sorts for the bionic future of prosthetic First,
Speaker 1: he was fitted with a titanium implant that was surgically
Speaker 1: inserted into the surviving bone of his arm. This is
Speaker 1: called ossio integration, and Jim's prosthetics can now attached to
Speaker 1: this socket instead of molding over a residual limb or
Speaker 1: stump on top of Ossio integration, Jim is living with
Speaker 1: a high tech electronic arm that looks like it's straight
Speaker 1: out of a Sci Fi props department. The Black Mental
Speaker 1: Arm costs upwards of one hundred thousand dollars, is controlled
Speaker 1: via Bluetooth app and provides increased mobility, grip and control.
Speaker 1: And in the interview you'll hear what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: Jim is truly inspiring and the future of prosthetics is
Speaker 1: extremely exciting to witness. So let's dive into my conversation
Speaker 1: with Jim Ashworth Beaumont. How would you say that your
Speaker 1: technical knowledge and experience helped you in your rehabilitation.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not straightforward to me because my history is
Speaker 2: quite varied. Into the armed forces as a professional athlete
Speaker 2: for a few years, I completed a PhD in human
Speaker 2: rehabilitation and the master's in rehabilitation. I qualified as a
Speaker 2: personal trainer, and I'm also a running coach as well,
Speaker 2: so all those different kind of aspects of my knowledge
Speaker 2: sort of focused on myself. I was kind of my
Speaker 2: own perfect subject, I suppose guinea pig, if that's the
Speaker 2: right phrase. So fortunately for me, it just turns out
Speaker 2: all the interests I've had, or the majority of them,
Speaker 2: have actually been related to getting somebody through an injury,
Speaker 2: optimizing their performance, getting them as good as they can
Speaker 2: be for sport. But those principles apply equally to patients,
Speaker 2: and I applied that to myself very quickly and very naturally,
Speaker 2: And I would say that gave me a massive advantage
Speaker 2: not only in addressing my own problem directly, but also
Speaker 2: communicating with other health cares and giving them a strategy
Speaker 2: to solved my problem. So it's extremely lucky in that respect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you talk about what limitation traditional prosthetics have, So.
Speaker 2: I saw a break prostheses down into three main categories.
Speaker 2: So is the let's say, very specific or task dependent device.
Speaker 2: So that might be something that's designed for a particular purpose, like,
Speaker 2: for example, I'm quite a keen runner, and what you
Speaker 2: need for good balance running is two arms as well
Speaker 2: as two legs. And once I've lost the arm, I
Speaker 2: spent four years running in a very weird way and
Speaker 2: getting lots of sort of injuries as a result. So
Speaker 2: this very simple kilogram and a half of steel attached
Speaker 2: to my body very very securely enables me to run
Speaker 2: and exercise very efficiently. So the next sort of category
Speaker 2: would be a body powered device. So the technology is
Speaker 2: probably about one hundred and fifty years old, and early
Speaker 2: examples are seen in the Civil War kind of American
Speaker 2: Civil War type of thing. When you have a war,
Speaker 2: innovation happens in prosthetics. So in like eighteen fifty odd
Speaker 2: when the American Civil War happened, people spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time thinking about, oh, how do we make a
Speaker 2: functioning device that people can actually pick things up or
Speaker 2: do a job once they get out of the services.
Speaker 2: So body powered devices they have. I usually have a
Speaker 2: hand and an elbow if we're talking about somebody's lost
Speaker 2: an arm above the elbow like I have, and then
Speaker 2: you can use cables which you're attached to other parts
Speaker 2: of the body and use accessory movements like shrugging the
Speaker 2: shoulders or stretching the chest out in order to power
Speaker 2: those components. I have a body powered arm that I
Speaker 2: use at work. And the advantage of those devices is
Speaker 2: they're very simple. You know exactly what they're going to do.
Speaker 2: The power comes from you're an input, not from a battery.
Speaker 2: And also they're very durable, so you can drop it
Speaker 2: in a bucket of water or we're using a dusty environment,
Speaker 2: it's still going to work. And then we come onto
Speaker 2: these powered devices like I'm wearing at the moment. So
Speaker 2: at the moment, I'm wearing a a prothesis with a
Speaker 2: powered elbow and I've got power grist, so it has
Speaker 2: an internal battery which you can take out in charge
Speaker 2: every day. These lithium iron botteries are quite heavy, but
Speaker 2: they do store a massive amount of charge and that
Speaker 2: battery will last me two days and allow me to
Speaker 2: power the hand and the wrist and the elbow of
Speaker 2: this arm. So it is a fully functioning arm. And
Speaker 2: the only thing that's missing is the level of control
Speaker 2: that I have with it, and that's something that is
Speaker 2: quite important and prosthetics, and that's where the latest research
Speaker 2: is going right now, is figuring out how to give
Speaker 2: people that the number of channels of the richness of
Speaker 2: information to control a synthetic arm, which, on the face
Speaker 2: of it, given the mechanical technology that's available now, in principle,
Speaker 2: you can control the hand individual fung pingu wise, but
Speaker 2: there are so many degrees of movement involved in that
Speaker 2: that you need the in some way to reinstatement and
Speaker 2: That's the way the challenge lies for me because leasing
Speaker 2: the arm at the level I have, I've got two
Speaker 2: channels of information. I've got biceps and triceps and that's it.
Speaker 1: So you're trying to solve for more control essentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's a number of variables you're juggling. Is
Speaker 2: the simple ability of the arm to move throughout all
Speaker 2: its degrees of freedom, and then there's the practicality, is
Speaker 2: the safety, the durability. So these are all qualities of
Speaker 2: a natural arm that you don't even think about. But
Speaker 2: once these problems start arising, and then you have to
Speaker 2: think of ways either to solve them all at once
Speaker 2: or prioritize particular properties to suit the environment, to suit
Speaker 2: the task. And that's where the skill of my job
Speaker 2: lies actually, is really talking with patients to figure out
Speaker 2: what the lives are like, what their priorities, and how
Speaker 2: to solve them.
Speaker 1: How would you describe O CEO integration to someone who
Speaker 1: knows nothing about prosthetics? I e.
Speaker 2: Me, Most of us or many of us will know
Speaker 2: about prosthetic teeth. You know where they're implanted into your skull,
Speaker 2: your jaw. Many of us will know people who were
Speaker 2: pre profoundly deaf and have a cochlear implant, so that's
Speaker 2: something that's implanted into the skull. And very many of
Speaker 2: us know about hip and knee replacements and things like that.
Speaker 2: So for the last thirty years we've had Ossi integration,
Speaker 2: where you have this bit of titanium that sticks into
Speaker 2: the bone. But if you have regard to the potential
Speaker 2: for infection, which you're going to get if something sticken
Speaker 2: out for your skin, as long as you take care
Speaker 2: of that, you've basically got something which is anchored directs
Speaker 2: your skeleton.
Speaker 1: And that was what the situation you were in.
Speaker 2: Yeah you got it. Yeah, absolutely. So the issue with
Speaker 2: me as a prostatic patient is that my residual limb,
Speaker 2: my stump is which very very short, and so that
Speaker 2: limits the amount of force you can apply to a
Speaker 2: prosthetic device and also the amount of pressure on your
Speaker 2: body that results from you try to put pressure through it.
Speaker 2: So you've got this tissue viability issues. Not all of
Speaker 2: us knowbmd's lost an arm or a leg, but wear
Speaker 2: a badly fitting pair of shoes for any time I'd
Speaker 2: have to walk for a long distance. You know about
Speaker 2: it pretty soon, right, And if that's your only pair
Speaker 2: of shoes. If that's all you got. What that does
Speaker 2: it limits your ability to use the device or it
Speaker 2: certainly puts you off. So what you have in upper
Speaker 2: and Prospects is a situation where many people need limbs
Speaker 2: in places like Gaza and all that. So many people
Speaker 2: have lost limbs, and even if you can provide somebody
Speaker 2: with the limb, the comfort factor and the tissue viability
Speaker 2: factor really limit the use. In Europe, we've got the
Speaker 2: situation in Ukraine and actually that is an experimental hotbed
Speaker 2: for ussy integration right now.
Speaker 1: To your point, war zones unfortunately become a breeding ground
Speaker 1: for innovation, you got it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, So those specialists in OSCI integration are spending
Speaker 2: a lot of time in Ukraine and it is pushing
Speaker 2: forward the field most definitely.
Speaker 1: What are some of the things that they're experimenting with.
Speaker 2: Well, if I can talk about the effect of an
Speaker 2: explosion or a high velocity bullet, if you catch you
Speaker 2: around in your upper arm, it's going to take your
Speaker 2: entire arm off. If you catch your through your forum,
Speaker 2: it's going to take your arm up below the elbow
Speaker 2: or potentially above it. And having an elbow having a
Speaker 2: joint is great under voluntary control, and having all those
Speaker 2: muscles and nerves undervolved controls great because then you can
Speaker 2: use them to directly drive a prosthesis. If you lose
Speaker 2: the entire arm, of the majority of arm, then you
Speaker 2: know get limited kind of options. So that's where OSI
Speaker 2: integration comes in as a way to securely anchor a prosthesis,
Speaker 2: and that enables you to push so much more load
Speaker 2: through your body. Before I got milesome integration, I could
Speaker 2: just about take loads through the end of it without
Speaker 2: a prosthesis on. But now I can support my entire
Speaker 2: body weight through my stump.
Speaker 1: Really yeah.
Speaker 2: I can do press ups, I can do pull ups.
Speaker 2: And when I'm a work as well as working with patients,
Speaker 2: I'm in the workshop building things as well, and I
Speaker 2: can apply a huge amount of force through the prosthesis
Speaker 2: and it's absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1: That's incredible, And that's because of OCO integration absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The other side of it is because the prosthesis
Speaker 2: so securely fixed to my body, it makes it so
Speaker 2: much easier to control because although I'm still using the
Speaker 2: electrical signals from my stump to control a prosthesis in
Speaker 2: quite a limited way. The fact that the electrodes stay
Speaker 2: in the same place all the time means that my
Speaker 2: control is so much better.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about the procedure and
Speaker 1: the risks of the procedure and what made you decide
Speaker 1: to try it?
Speaker 2: Well, there was the practical side of things that I've discussed.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say it necessarily limited me at work, but
Speaker 2: I was. My use of a prosthesis was very limited
Speaker 2: to work through necessity, and then when I was outside work,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't wear anything. When you're wearing a prosthesis, you
Speaker 2: kind of have to think about what your priorities are.
Speaker 2: I weighed up the benefit of using a prosthesis against
Speaker 2: the comfort side of things and decided, well, it's not
Speaker 2: worth me wearing a prosthesis for most of the time, right, So,
Speaker 2: knowing about the science already, I didn't need to be
Speaker 2: convinced that having the surgery to implant the titanium implant
Speaker 2: into my stuff was a good idea. It was more
Speaker 2: the emotional side of it. You know, it continues actually
Speaker 2: to play on the back of your mind and you're
Speaker 2: always thinking, I've got this artificial things sticking out through
Speaker 2: my body, This is kind of weird, being right, I
Speaker 2: would imagine, Yeah, but when as soon as I put
Speaker 2: an arm on, that problem solves because I'm getting the benefit.
Speaker 2: So what I tend to do now is as soon
Speaker 2: as getting out of bed in the morning, I'll put
Speaker 2: a prosthetic arm on, and then I feel complete and
Speaker 2: all those concerns about having that bit of mel sticking
Speaker 2: out through my body go away. Don't even think about it.
Speaker 1: So it's really when it's not there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, But before the US integration, wearing an arm
Speaker 2: we felt foreign and weird because it wouldn't do etaally
Speaker 2: what I wanted to do. It to do it moved
Speaker 2: relative to my body. So because you've got the bone
Speaker 2: in my arm, then you've got the soft tissue, and
Speaker 2: then you've got the prosthesis on the outside of that,
Speaker 2: all these things move relative to each other, and so
Speaker 2: it never does exactly what we wanted it to do,
Speaker 2: whereas now I'm in control of it again.
Speaker 1: After the break, how Jim's one hundred thousand dollars arm
Speaker 1: works with him stay with us. How did you end
Speaker 1: up with the high tech prosthetic that you have now? Like,
Speaker 1: what was the process of developing it? After your accident.
Speaker 2: So essentially that was the based on our relationship that
Speaker 2: I've so reinforced in my time in ospital. So I
Speaker 2: spent four months in a critical care unit, so very
Speaker 2: limited in terms of my mobility, and so I got
Speaker 2: busy kind of exploring all sorts of avenues either using
Speaker 2: the cod bless the Internet, but also linking up with
Speaker 2: my kind of connections within the industry. So one of
Speaker 2: the guys that I spoke to was Alantdougal at Proactive Prosthetics,
Speaker 2: which is a private company based out into the west
Speaker 2: of London, and I basically got chatted to him and
Speaker 2: started talking about what as possible. This fantastic arm that
Speaker 2: I have, which is worth an excess of one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand pounds, is a nice stuff black and in myoelectrics,
Speaker 2: which is the field of externally powered prosthetic devices, most
Speaker 2: of these aren't covered for waterproof or dusty environments. So
Speaker 2: what I tend to do is revert to using a
Speaker 2: body powered prosthesis for things that require that sort of
Speaker 2: level of durability. Now, in terms of the arm itself,
Speaker 2: I've got two channels of information available. I've got the
Speaker 2: biceps and the triceps which are the two surviving muscles
Speaker 2: that I have in my arm. So if I was
Speaker 2: using a traditional powered prosthesis, I would be able to
Speaker 2: open and close one component and that's it. So what
Speaker 2: we're then doing is you were using software in order
Speaker 2: to improve the flexibility of my use of the device. Right,
Speaker 2: So I've got an elbow which has got two degrees
Speaker 2: of freedom flex and extent. I've got a wrist which
Speaker 2: is wroteation only, so that's another two degrees of freedom,
Speaker 2: and then I've got the hand itself. And here what
Speaker 2: I'm doing is I'm using mechatronic algorithms in order to
Speaker 2: change the grip of the hand. So once again we
Speaker 2: have the old traditional hands which just have one grip
Speaker 2: pattern which is like a pinch grip, and then we
Speaker 2: have these multi grip hands which are oution about now.
Speaker 2: This particular hand I'm using, which is an elimb made
Speaker 2: by a company called Dosser. By the way, this has
Speaker 2: up to thirty two different grip patterns and they're programmable.
Speaker 2: So I've programmed this with the grip patterns I need,
Speaker 2: and when I want to switch it, I essentially use
Speaker 2: a pattern of muscle twitches in order to change the
Speaker 2: grass pattern. So all those degrees of movement in their hand,
Speaker 2: which I think the number about twenty seven and all,
Speaker 2: I've actually devolved to a mechanical algorithm, but it's under
Speaker 2: my control. You can give the patient like a smartphone
Speaker 2: with the software for the hand, so to a limited extent,
Speaker 2: they can actually program their.
Speaker 1: Hand themselves, and that hopening currently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, This hands been around about fifteen years,
Speaker 2: I think, so that technology is there, and me, being
Speaker 2: a qualified procethestist, I've also got the software for the
Speaker 2: wrist and the elbow, which has given me complete cote
Speaker 2: blanche to program the arm, which the average patient doesn't
Speaker 2: have at the moment. But suffice to say, prostetists spend
Speaker 2: an awful lot of time trying to get it right.
Speaker 1: That's incredible.
Speaker 2: The next stage in this is software which will essentially
Speaker 2: configure itself when you put the arm.
Speaker 1: On on the basis of your muscles.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a software package called coapt and that is
Speaker 2: a pattern recognition software. So instead of just having electrodes
Speaker 2: on specific muscle groups within your remaining part of your arm,
Speaker 2: you have a sleeve which you roll onto the arm
Speaker 2: and that picks up patterns of activation rather than individual signals,
Speaker 2: and then you assign each pattern of activation to a
Speaker 2: particular action. So it means that the patient doesn't actually
Speaker 2: have to train to use the device. The device trains
Speaker 2: itself to work with the patient, which is pretty awesome.
Speaker 2: That's incredible, and that's machine learning. It's not quite AI.
Speaker 2: AI is a different thing entirely, but it is using
Speaker 2: machine learning to get the device to work with the patient.
Speaker 1: And can you just elaborate on that a little bit
Speaker 1: for a lay person.
Speaker 2: Sure. So what you do is you start saying to
Speaker 2: the patient, okay, i'll put this device on you. Now
Speaker 2: if you think about closing your hand, and then you
Speaker 2: show them on the screen hand closing, and then what
Speaker 2: they'll do is just imagine the hand closing and using
Speaker 2: their nerves that they had, and then using the patterns
Speaker 2: of electrical signal that you pick up off the surfaces
Speaker 2: of the skin, you basically generate a pattern of activation
Speaker 2: which you can then assign to the hand closing.
Speaker 1: So it's code. What you're doing.
Speaker 2: Essentially allowing the machine to code that signal and match
Speaker 2: it to an output. So it means that the machine
Speaker 2: and the individual can learn together, which is pretty.
Speaker 1: So essentially like the software update is coming from the person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely, that's it. Wow, you're uploading that information
Speaker 2: every time you put on It's incredible. That's pretty well.
Speaker 1: Has it changed the way that you work with patients.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's changing the way I deal with patients.
Speaker 2: It's definitely changed the way they see me. I was
Speaker 2: always very kind of go focused and interested in educating
Speaker 2: patients and giving them their heads up on what the
Speaker 2: light the outcome would be of their kind of treatment.
Speaker 2: And there's that kind of paradigm gap between a clinician
Speaker 2: and the patient where I'm thinking one thing and they're thinking,
Speaker 2: what the hell do they know? Because they are all fit,
Speaker 2: healthy and stuff, and they've got a point and I suppose.
Speaker 2: And then when they see me with artificial limb because
Speaker 2: of where the armor work, I just walk into the
Speaker 2: waiting room and greet the patient and say hi, I'm Jim,
Speaker 2: and they'll look at my arm straight off the bat.
Speaker 2: Then I can see the wheels turning. We're over the
Speaker 2: huddle already because they can see I've been through something
Speaker 2: and I've got some sort of insight into what it
Speaker 2: takes to come back from an injury or a pathology
Speaker 2: of some sort. So that's huge. Actually, it really is.
Speaker 1: What is the biggest change in your daily life since
Speaker 1: you got an ascio integrated prosthesis.
Speaker 2: I would say the level of confidence I've got in
Speaker 2: just living life and feeling on a par with other people.
Speaker 2: The way I approach my life. I don't regard as
Speaker 2: myself as disabled, let's put that way. And that's not
Speaker 2: because I refute the word. It's just that I'm enable
Speaker 2: in so many parts of my life that actually the
Speaker 2: stuff I can't do is kind of infintestimally small. But
Speaker 2: since the also integration, because I can wear an arm
Speaker 2: all the time and operate and in a lot of
Speaker 2: things exceed what other people do with sport and things
Speaker 2: like that, I just feel like a different person, but
Speaker 2: somebody that's equal to other people.
Speaker 1: You talk about how ZEO integration is something that you
Speaker 1: get through private insurance and fund it yourself. I know
Speaker 1: it's very important to you probably to have these things
Speaker 1: more widely available. What is that going to take.
Speaker 2: I think it's evidence, that's what it's going to take.
Speaker 2: So if you imagine that I'm one of maybe ten
Speaker 2: or fifteen people in the UK, that have had oscient
Speaker 2: integration in the last ten years, right, it is quite
Speaker 2: hard to develop that kind of evidence. Now there are
Speaker 2: some recipients of OSC integration in the UK that have
Speaker 2: received it on the National Health Service their lower limb
Speaker 2: and their ex servicemen. But as the cost comes down,
Speaker 2: as we produce more evidence to show that it's not
Speaker 2: a technology that's going to cause harm through infection for example,
Speaker 2: because that's one of the only real downsides with oscient integration,
Speaker 2: apart from the bone fracturing or whatever, and make it
Speaker 2: more economical for people to get that technology, the better
Speaker 2: and more people will get it, and as at some
Speaker 2: point we'll reach the point where our authorities allow people
Speaker 2: to get more of it. Now America is slightly different
Speaker 2: how so well because insurance kind of driven economy, right,
Speaker 2: so if you have the money, you can have the technology.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You can in the UK as well, but it's much
Speaker 2: more explicit in the US.
Speaker 1: I guess what does the future of this technology look like?
Speaker 1: As someone who's on the front lines of it, both
Speaker 1: personally and professionally.
Speaker 2: Well, the also integration technology moves alongside other technologies as well,
Speaker 2: So I talked about the anchoring of the prothesis to
Speaker 2: the body, which is really important and that's how I've benefited.
Speaker 2: There are also other techniques which can try and compensate
Speaker 2: for the lack of information that is transmitted from the
Speaker 2: individual through to the prosthesis. At the end of the day,
Speaker 2: we're talking about translating thought into action, but there are
Speaker 2: so many steps along the way there, and one of
Speaker 2: the big ones is actually transmitting those impulses from the
Speaker 2: surviving nerves through to the prosthesis and then to the
Speaker 2: actual components, and then delivering back sensory information back to
Speaker 2: the person, which is where I control loopsclosed and you
Speaker 2: actually get effective control.
Speaker 1: Right, What do you think that the next evolution will be, Like,
Speaker 1: what is what comes after zo integration?
Speaker 2: Well, I think what we see more of in rehabilitation
Speaker 2: is probably exoskeletons.
Speaker 1: I've spent time with someone with a pair of exo legs,
Speaker 1: all right, Okay, yeah, it's pretty incredible to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's been quite a lot of interest in
Speaker 2: the delivery of exoskeletons to reinstate walking function and it's
Speaker 2: quite so of illustrative that you can put a pair
Speaker 2: of exoskeleton legs on an individual and then what do
Speaker 2: you do with it? Because you can press the button
Speaker 2: to get the anista straight in and the hips straight
Speaker 2: in to get the present standing and then move them
Speaker 2: in a straight line, and then what's the next step.
Speaker 2: So every time an individual moves through the environment, and
Speaker 2: this is the issue is prosthetics as well, is that
Speaker 2: you come hard up against the practical challenges of using
Speaker 2: devices that really aren't under very higher levels of control.
Speaker 1: Is there technology that you wish was available for amputees
Speaker 1: right now that is not that in your wildest dreams
Speaker 1: you wish existed.
Speaker 2: So one of the things I would like to try next,
Speaker 2: which is already out there, is targeted muscle reinnovation. So
Speaker 2: that's where you take that nerve that you've got still
Speaker 2: in there but it's been obviously cut by the accident,
Speaker 2: and then plug that into a little bit of muscle,
Speaker 2: and then that little bit of muscle will give you
Speaker 2: a signal when the nerve contracts, when the nerve is
Speaker 2: stimulated right by your brain effectively. So that's a really
Speaker 2: neat way of giving information back to the prosthesis. So
Speaker 2: it's a really great way of reinstating movement that doesn't
Speaker 2: give you the full control loop, because you still need
Speaker 2: to sense what's going on in the limb end. And
Speaker 2: one thing with prosthetics is that lack of sensory information
Speaker 2: that you've got in a natural limb and it's not
Speaker 2: in the prosthesis. So that's it. Yet their innovation that's
Speaker 2: coming on Actually you can literally wire yourself into a
Speaker 2: prosthesis now.
Speaker 1: So Jim, what are some of the things that have
Speaker 1: to happen in order for this tech to become more
Speaker 1: widely available.
Speaker 2: So at the moment, an awful lot of the development
Speaker 2: they're academic efforts, but they're going to feed down to
Speaker 2: the commercial side of things, which is really down to
Speaker 2: the relationships between research groups and working surgeons. You know,
Speaker 2: these are clinical teams as well working very closely together,
Speaker 2: and those groups based around the world are working together
Speaker 2: to take the technology forward very quickly. So if we're
Speaker 2: talking about providing maximum benefit to the maximum amount of people,
Speaker 2: it's really about making the procedures as commercially viable as possible.
Speaker 2: I suppose. Unfortunately you talk about hugely complex engineering and
Speaker 2: surgical challenges. It takes money to do that, to develop that,
Speaker 2: So I see my role now as actually trying to
Speaker 2: bridge the gap between the commercial side of things, insurance
Speaker 2: based medicine and NHS based kind of high value, low
Speaker 2: cost care.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much, Jim for taking all this
Speaker 1: time to talk very personally and scientifically about what you've
Speaker 1: been working on and what your experience has been.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Good problem.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week for Tech Stuff. I'm Kara Price.
Speaker 1: My co host is oz Vaalashan. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Eliza Dennis and Tyler Hill. It was executive produced
Speaker 1: by me oz Vaalashan, Julian Nutter and Kate Osborne forro Kaleidoscope,
Speaker 1: and Katrina Norvall for iHeart Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed this
Speaker 1: episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. Please rate,
Speaker 1: review and reach out to us at tech Stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. We want to hear from you.