Experts Hail 'Remarkable' Success of Electronic Implant in Restoring Sight

An electronic eye implant has restored reading ability to patients blinded by geographic atrophy, a form of dry age-related macular degeneration. Results published Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that 84% of trial participants regained the ability to read letters, numbers, and words after receiving the Prima device.

The microchip measures two millimetres by two millimetres and is implanted beneath the center of the retina. Patients wear augmented reality glasses containing a camera that projects images onto the chip. The device converts light into electrical pulses transmitted to the brain.

Frank Holz, the study's lead author and chair of ophthalmology at the University Hospital of Bonn, called the implant "a paradigm shift in treating late-stage age-related macular degeneration." Mahi Muqit, a consultant at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, said the trial enabled "meaningful central vision restoration, which has never been done before." The procedure takes less than two hours and requires intensive rehabilitation. Science Corporation, which manufactures the device, has applied for clinical authorization in the United States and Europe.

So, support lifecycle?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Will these ones retain vendor support longer than the last batch [ieee.org]?

Re: So, support lifecycle?

[liqu1d]

Seems like they should be forced to create a fund to continue to support the patients even if they go bankrupt.

Re:

[alvinrod]

The problem with that approach is that it heavily disincentivizes research into these areas because it adds additional costs to something that is already very expensive to develop. A better approach is to require that the abandoned systems have any hardware or software source code opened so that maintenance is possible. If a company is abandoning something they shouldn't care if anything related to it becomes free and open. If it were worth anything they could have sold it.

So just let the government do it

[rsilvergun]

The real problem here is we turn everything into a for-profit Enterprise even things that very obviously shouldn't be.

Capitalism works great for things where there's lots and lots of competition. Assuming you have a referee in the form of bureaucrats enforcing antitrust laws.

But you just aren't going to get a lot of competition for something this specialized. That's why it's such a big deal. We already can see the free market isn't going to step up for these patients.

At some point we need out of

Re:

[easyTree]

> At some point we need out of the box thinking
How about we open-up the pool of things advertisers pay for to include things which have widely-acknowledged societal benefit?

Looking-through-the-window-at-another-box thinking?

Re:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In the new CEO's expertly crafted I-am-villain statement; he explains: "The past, he added in an email, is “simply not relevant to the new future.”"

I, um, guess it was polite of him to not talk about "the bigger picture" to the people whose eyes he shut down?

Re: So, support lifecycle?

[KeithConover]

Use the term "escrow" for the software and hardware documentation so that lawyers and legislators understand how to assure necessary upgrades and support if the company flops without excess expense for their company developing the product.

Mr. LaForge

[93 Escort Wagon]

Make it so!

Ok this is cool but not as crazy as

[jacks smirking reven]

When I learned since the 1960's there is a sight restoring procedure that involves using a tooth as a vision device. They take a removed tooth, grow tissue on it in your cheek, drill a hole in it, install a lens and then implant it into your eyeball.

Osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis [wikipedia.org]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] (Warning, graphic eye surgery)

Re:

[nealric]

That is crazy indeed. But what I don't fully understand is why the tooth is necessary to making it work (just based on reading the wikipedia entry). Isn't it effectively a way to implant an artificial lens for which the tooth is the housing? But why can't the housing just be made out of titanium or some other artificial material?

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

I believe on the video I saw about this was that the tooth is an ideal scaffold of sorts to build tissue and hold the lens onto and it wont deal with rejection issues. It's just crazy that it works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Re:

[gweihir]

It is also pretty crazy that somebody had that idea and then made it work. But Science is often very non-intuitive.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

And with something medical like that you can only theorize so much, eventually they had to just "welp, let's get a tooth in this eyeball"

Re:

[nealric]

Imagine being the very first person to have that tried on.

Display from camera?

[Shakes Fist]

Can I have the thermal & night vision add-on pack please?

Who pays?

[johnstrass1]

"age was 78.9±6.4 years " (from the article source ) How much will this cost to treat these octogenarians? The USA has a mandatory payment to companies (whatever the company proposes to charge gets paid) for the elderly regardless of cost for medical devices for the initial 6 months.

Re:

[rocket rancher]

"age was 78.9±6.4 years " (from the article source ) How much will this cost to treat these octogenarians? The USA has a mandatory payment to companies (whatever the company proposes to charge gets paid) for the elderly regardless of cost for medical devices for the initial 6 months.

F'ing drive by trolls. We’ve got a peer-reviewed NEJM study showing meaningful vision restoration for people blinded by macular degeneration — the first of its kind — and this troll wants to derail the conversation by griping about billing codes. The “mandatory payment” this troll is invoking isn’t some blank check to industry — it’s a temporary (at least they got the six months part right) Medicare coverage rule (Transitional Coverage for Emerging Technolog