Technology Can Help Increase Access to Experts as Use of
Neuromodulation Grows, Suggests Neurosurgery
With the rapidly expanding use of brain and spinal cord
stimulation therapy (neuromodulation), new "remote presence"
technologies may help to meet the demand for experts to perform stimulator
programming, reports a study in the January issue of Neurosurgery, official
journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
The preliminary study by Dr. Ivar Mendez of Queen Elizabeth
II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, supports the
feasibility and safety of using a remote presence robot—called the
"RP-7"—to increase access to specialists qualified to program the
brain and spine stimulators used in neuromodulation.