Lessons from Pharma Inform Pay-per-Dose Pricing
president & CEO, Patient’s Academy for Research Advocacy March 2021 issue The allure of a pay-per-dose revenue model for neuromodulation therapies is easy to understand—especially for therapies that will compete directly with drugs for payers’ and patients’ healthcare dollars. Proponents of the approach expect that collecting billing for a device up front will speed up patient access, smooth the path to reimbursement, and make cost-effectiveness comparisons with drugs more fair.
Several Emerging Firms to Present at 2021 Bioelectronic Medicine Forum
Neurotech Reports, the publisher of Neurotech Business Report, announced that Murthy Simhambhatla, the president and CEO of SetPoint Medical, will keynote the Fourth Annual Bioelectric Medicine Forum on April 6, 2021. The event will take place via video conference, though Neurotech Reports plans to be back in New York City in 2022. Simhambhatla took the helm of the Valencia, CA bioelectronic medicine firm in August 2018.
Refining Our Targets
As the neuromodulation industry begins to recover from a crippling pandemic that seriously impacted the number of procedures performed in 2020, it is worth reflecting on another scourge that impacted our nation last year. We’re referring to the growing incidence of racism and discrimination that came to a head in several high-profile incidents. A newly published article in the journal Neuromodulati…
Basic Science Advances Promise Cochlear Implant Gains
The cochlear implant industry has experienced significant growth in the last 20 years, as industry leaders Cochlear Ltd., Advanced Bionics, and Medel have offered a steady stream of enhancements to their devices and sound processing algorithms. Still, the field has been limited somewhat auditory channels—increasing the number of electrodes doesn’t necessarily deliver a more robust frequency spectrum.
Post-Pandemic SCS and PNS Markets Due to Intensify
The market for implanted pain neuromodulation devices is expected to rebound precipitously later this year and in subsequent years, according to a new market research report from the editors of Neurotech Reports. The report, entitled The Market for Pain Neuromodulation: 2021-2026 , offers a detailed forecast of implanted spinal cord stimulation systems and peripheral nerve stimulation systems. The…
Depression Research Pursues Personalized Therapy
Neurotech researchers pursuing new therapies for treating mood disorders such as depression are increasingly looking toward personalized therapies to help patients resistant to medications. Recently, research teams at three U.S. institutions published findings supporting this new strategy. Earlier this month, a team of investigators at UC San Francisco’s Dolby Family Center for Mood Disorders publi…
Restoring Our Vision
Over the last 20 years, one of the most promising, though one of the most challenging, applications of neurotechnology has been visual neuroprosthetics. The goal of restoring vision to blind people has attracted a wide array of researchers and entrepreneurs, and a relatively small though not insignificant amount of funding from investors, non-profit organizations, and government entities. Sadly, the path to commercialization in this area has been littered with casualties.
Neuromodulation Firms and Investigators Present Data at NANS 21 Meeting
Investigators affiliated with several vendors of neuromodulation systems presented findings at the 2021 meeting of the North American Neuromodulation Society earlier this month. The meeting, which was originally planned for Orlando, FL, took place via video conference. At the meeting, Nevro announced results supporting the use of the company’s HF10 therapy for patients with chronic pain, including results from the painful diabetic neuropathy and non-surgical refractory back pain randomized clinical trials.
Neurotech Entrepreneurs and Veterans Meet at 20th Annual Leaders Forum
More than 110 neurotechnolgy professionals attended the 20th Annual Neurotech Leaders Forum last month. The hybrid event had a handful of attendees on site in San Francisco, but most participated via Zoom video conference. The two-day conference featured two keynote presentations: Nevro founder Konstantinos Alataris spoke on the first day, and Kernel founder Bryan Johnson spoke with NBR editor James Cavuoto on the second day [NBR Nov20 p2].
Altering Minds
The field of psychiatry has undergone several significant transformations in recent years. One of them is the advent of neuromodulation therapies that promise to help those with treatment-resistant mood disorders. Equally important, neurotech approaches to psychiatric disorders can shed much needed light on the neurological basis of affect, as we report in our article on page 1 of this issue. But a…