News

Gold Electrode Awards to be Presented at 2006 Neurotech Leaders Forum in San Francisco Neurotech Reports editors will announce the winners of the 2006 Gold Electrode Awards at the annual Neurotech Leaders Forum, to be held September 28-29, 2006 at the Crowne Plaza San Francisco International Airport. The awards will be presented at a luncheon ceremony the second day of the event. Award categories include Best New Product, Most Promising Start-Up Firm, and Neurotechnology Researcher of the Year.

Cyberonics Chairman and CEO to Keynote 2006 Neurotech Leaders Forum Robert P. “Skip” Cummins, chairman and CEO of Cyberonics Inc., will be the keynote speaker at the 2006 Neurotech Leaders Forum September 28-29 in San Francisco, CA. Cummins will share some of his experiences dealing with regulatory, technical, and marketing issues during his tenure at Cyberonics, the Houston, TX manufacturer of vagus nerve stimulation systems.

Neural Engineers Gather for IEEE EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering , senior technical editor The 2nd International IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Conference on Neural Engineering was held March 16-19, 2005 in Arlington, VA. The meeting, chaired , drew over 240 attendees representing 27 countries, and about half of the attendees were students. There were 186 papers spanning the gamut of neurotechnology, including brain computer interfacing, neural stimulation, and hardware development.

2005 in Review The year 2005 was a banner year for the neurotechnology industry in many respects. Overall, financial performance of both public and private companies trended in the direction of black ink. There were a large number of new products receiving FDA approval during the year. Plus there were several healthy mergers and acquisitions and several startups in the space obtained venture-capital funding during the year.

Paying the Pauper The neurotechnology industry, like the entire medical products industry, depends greatly on the outlook for health insurance reimbursement. As we discuss in our article on page 1 of this issue, when it comes to reimbursement, there is no greater force than the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This agency’s decisions and policies impact far more than the 40 million elderly and disabled Americans who participate in Medicare.

Following Our Heart Since the inception of the neurostimulation device industry, many market observers, analysts, and investors have compared the emerging market for implanted neuro devices to the growth of cardiac devices 20 years ago. One of the most recent people to make that comparison is Alan Levy, CEO of Northstar Neuroscience and keynote speaker at the 2005 Neurotech Leaders Forum [see article p7].

Closing the Loop Implanted neurostimulation systems currently on the market have seen considerable commercial and clinical success with tens of thousands of users. Nonetheless, most of the systems available today suffer from one notable shortcoming: the lack of closed-loop feedback that influences the delivery of subsequent stimulation signals. As we report in our article on page 1, several neurotechnology firms and research institutions are now looking at closing this loop.

State-of-the-Art Neurotech Presented at 2005 Neural Interfaces Workshop The 2005 Neural Interfaces Workshop, held September 7-9 in Bethesda, MD, offered attendees an excellent opportunity to observe the state of the art in neurostimulation technology. As it did in 2004, the event combined the annual Neural Prosthesis Workshop—now in its 36th year—and the DBS Consortium. This year’s workshop include…

Expanding Our Borders Very often, a new industry can be defined does not encompass as well as what is included within its borders. Such was our philosophy when we launched Neurotech Reports in 2001 and has guided our editorial mission as we enter our fifth year of publishing. From the outset, we excluded two sizeable and well established markets: the cardiac pacing and the neuropharmaceutical industries.

New Report Examines Neuropharm and Neurotech A newly published market research report devoted to the neurotechnology industry takes a comprehensive look at the market potential for the industry, including the neuropharmaceutical sector, which the authors say generated $87 billion in revenues last year. The report, titled The Neurotechnology Industry 2005, was published , CA. Though the authors’ vie…