COMMERCIALISATION | CORNER
<< Figure 1: CerePlex I. >> A View Towards
Personalised Medicine
DR. FLORIAN SOLZBACHER, PRESIDENT, BLACKROCK MICROSYSTEMS,
PROFESSOR OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING, CO-CHAIR COMS 2014, DR. STEVEN WALSH, DISTINGUISHED AND REGENTS PROFESSOR AT UNM, INSTITUTE PROFESSOR OF ENTREPRENEURIAL RENEWAL OF INDUSTRIAL, UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE, PAST PRESIDENT OF MANCEF
One of the drivers of the pharmaceutical industry growth is the movement toward personalised
medicine. The movement from mass production to mass customisation in the medical field is being embraced by giants like Glaxo Smith Kline as well
as small and medium sized firms such as Blackrock Microsystems and Blackrock Neuromed. The mass customisation of medical care is driving both cost, and potentially huge savings that will lead to personal and societal abundance. Many understand the increased cost portion of this effort. However, where the savings come from
might seem more obscure. Just where might these savings emerge? Potentially savings to society
would be in terms of drug development effort that once had to be halted or withdrawn from the
market due to serious side effects to segments of the population even though they were effective
for many patient segments. If these side effects can be predetermined by test and computational analysis, then drug therapies need not be eliminated from use, saving the pharmaceutical
industry hundreds of millions to billions of dollars per therapeutic drug that has to be withdrawn.
Yet how do we reach the potential that individualised medicine can bring to our community? Many immediately seek an understanding of the human genome and genomic discoveries can help tailor medicine to meet unique patient needs. These efforts seek to understand the genomic sequence of patients with uterine cancer, heart disease, or any other medical issues and how these differ from the unaffected population. Even more elemental are the efforts that can identify drug therapies that will work exceptionally for a subset of an affected group but might create more harm than good for other segments of an affected group. Conceptually this is great but how can we get there? How might we initiate the effort to gain the information required to provide reliable data acquisition? As a start, many are now focusing on the elemental tools, sensors and systems that can provide the robust data and trends required to make individual patient solution choices. Dr. Solzbacher and others have initiated the multichannel, multi dimensional systems and sensors. They utilise Internet of Things (IoT) based wireless noise-free links between data acquisition systems by digitising analogue neural signals at the recording site.
The latest development from Blackrock Microsystems Engineering lab along this line is the CerePex I ( see figure 1). It is the first implantable ePhys System for human applications. CerePlex I records up to 96 channels of high-resolution data from the longest human implantable electrode, Utah Electrode Array and transmits signal through one external pigtail. It is easy to use, personalised, eliminates cables and generates exceptional information.
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47 | commercial micro manufacturing international Vol 7 No.2
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