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Biography |
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Professor Rob Shepherd is the Director of the Bionics Institute and Head of the Medical Bionics Department at the University of Melbourne. In the 1980s he led the preclinical team that demonstrated the safety and efficacy of Cochlear's bionic ear in both adults and children, and more recently his team developed a prototype bionic eye as part of an Australia-wide collaboration – Bionic Vision Australia – to develop a commercial bionic eye. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers, given 90 invited international keynote conference presentations, received $90M of research funding as a chief investigator. Professor Shepherd has overseen the expansion of the Bionic Ear Institute into the Bionics Institute, broadening its research portfolio to include retinal prostheses, neurobionics - a platform technology for diseases such as epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and the stimulation of visceral nerves, and introducing a contract research organisation specialising in in vitro and in vivo R&D associated with neural prostheses and drug delivery technologies. In 2014 he was awarded the Garnett Passe Medal at the Royal Society of Medicine, London for his contributions to Otolaryngology and in 2015 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and a member of Knowledge Nation 100.
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Abstract |
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Medical bionics: engineering solutions for neurological disorders |
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Medical bionics: engineering solutions for neurological disorders
R. K. SHEPHERD1,2
1Bionics Institute and 2The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Neural prostheses are engineered devices that record from and/or electrically stimulate excitable tissue in order to improve health outcomes. Since the introduction of the first heart pacemaker in the 1950s, many bionic devices have been approved for clinical use, resulting in a dramatic impact on the quality of life of millions of people. These technologies depend on a well-defined clinical need, fundamental biomedical engineering principles, a thorough understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the target neural population and surgical expertise required to implant the device. I will provide an overview of the design principles of modern neural prostheses using two well-known commercial devices as examples; cochlear implants for the treatment of severe hearing loss and deep brain stimulators (DBS) designed to alleviate motor tremor associated with Parkinson’s disease. Significantly, there are a large number of devices currently undergoing development or early stage commercialisation, fuelling expectation that the field of bionics will undergo a major expansion over the next decade. These devices include retinal prostheses to provide visual cues for the blind; functional electrical stimulation to assist paraplegics stand and walk; DBS to treat severe depression and related psychiatric disorders; vestibular prostheses to assist patients with severe balance disorders; vagal nerve stimulators for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease and recording or feedback devices such as brain–computer interfaces and peripheral nerve-recording arrays to control computer-assisted devices including artificial limbs. Finally, it is important to emphasize that neural prostheses provide a relatively crude representation of the temporal and spatial patterns of neural activity observed in normal neural structures; these devices are also reliant on the plastic brain for their considerable clinical success.
Supported by the Australian Research Council, DARPA, the NH&MRC, NIH and the Victorian Government.
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