Devices & Diagnostics

Neurotech company looks to break into deep brain stimulation market for Parkinson’s disease

A neurotechnology company is planning a clinical study aimed at helping it enter the deep […]

A neurotechnology company is planning a clinical study aimed at helping it enter the deep brain stimulation market for Parkinson’s disease patients.

Cleveland-based Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies is aiming to help surgeons and neurologists fine-tune deep brain stimulation (DBS) systems after they’ve been implanted in Parkinson’s patients. DBS involves implanting an electrode in the brain to deliver electrical stimulation to block abnormal nerve signals that cause tremors, slowed movements and stiff joints that grow worse as Parkinson’s progresses in patients.

Great Lakes’ Kinesia movement disorder assessment technology would be used to generate what company president Joe Giuffrida calls “tuning maps” that would provide doctors with a color-coded diagram that shows how specific motor symptoms respond to different DBS settings.

Doctors would then use those maps to make adjustments to the amplitude, frequency or location of electricity delivered to patients, which would optimize DBS treatments and better control symptoms.

Giuffrida called working with DBS patients “a significant opportunity for market growth” for Great Lakes.

“Once a DBS system has been implanted, there are many opportunities to improve the outpatient programming experience, such as reducing the time and cost, increasing patient access to expert programmers and optimizing symptom control,” he said.

Next month, Great Lakes expects to begin a 15-patient study of its technology for use with DBS patients. The company is collaborating with University of Minnesota researchers on the study.

Great Lakes’ Kinesia technology is already used for home monitoring of patients with movement disorders.

Earlier this month, Great Lakes was awarded a patent around the Kinesia system’s quantitative assessment of movement disorders. The company also began another clinical study, this one aimed at assessing the Kinesia in detecting subtle motor function changes in Parkinson’s patients.

 

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