One of the most troublesome things for the 20 percent of people with epilepsy for whom drugs are ineffective is that they never know when a seizure is going to happen. That can create all sorts of risks for activities from walking down the street to swimming or taking a bath. But one group of scientists is developing an implant that could give people with the condition some warning before they have a seizure and improve their quality of life.
Dr. Karen Moxon is a professor of biomedical engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She developed an implantable neuromodulation device that uses single-neuron recordings to predict seizures. The Epilepsy Control System can be implanted into an epilepsy patient’s neural tissues, according to an executive summary. The group is in the midst of a proof of concept study for patients funded by the Coulter Foundation. So far, seven patients have had the implant and Moxon’s team is in the process of analyzing the data.
NeuroPace has also developed an implantable device to treat epilepsy and other neurological disorders.
About 200,000 people are diagnosed with epilepsy each year and the majority are helped with pharmaceuticals. Moxon’s team estimates that if its device could capture 1 percent of the market or 574,600 patients with intractable epilepsy, and were sold for $10,000, it could generate $57.6 million in revenue.
