This proposal requests partial support for an International Workshop on Clinical Brain-Machine Interface (BMI) Systems aimed to identify and discuss challenges and potential solutions leading to the development and deployment of interface systems based on neural activity in clinical applications. The meeting will be held at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI) at the Texas Medical Center, and organized by the University of Houston, Houston, Texas on February, 2013. There are three aims: 1) To develop a Strategic Plan ('Roadmap') for implementation of BMI systems in clinical research referring to researchers, practitioners, program directors/managers at federal agencies, the industry, and the end-users;2) A Consensus Report for disseminating the findings of the meeting will be prepared upon the conclusion of the workshop and submitted for peer-review to Frontiers in Neuroprosthetics -- a first- tier electronic open access journal devoted to studies of brain-machine interfaces (BMI) and neuroprostheses;and 3) Outreach to outstanding junior faculty, postdocs and graduate students from under-represented groups, including women and minorities will ensure a wide range of experiences and views. We will innovate the workshop format by combining (single track) state-of-the-art talks by senior and junior faculty, clinicians, and speakers from federal agencies with hands-on demonstrations and audience-driven discussions whose content is provided by the participants themselves - based on the very successful unconference format pioneered by Google, Nature and O'Reilly Media.
of this workshop is that the discussions will define the challenges that face the development of effective, user-friendly, clinically deployable neural interface systems in clinical applications (e.g., rehabilitation robotcs and restoration of motor or communicative functions), resulting in a strategic plan (the 'Roadmap'), developed by all stakeholders, for adoption of BMI systems in clinical research. This Roadmap to be published as a Consensus Report in a Tier 1 open journal would serve as a guide to researchers and program managers at federal agencies to develop funding opportunities and support mechanisms to enhance and accelerate the deployment of clinical BMI systems.
| Contreras-Vidal, Jose L (2014) Identifying Engineering, Clinical and Patient's Metrics for Evaluating and Quantifying Performance of Brain-Machine Interface (BMI) Systems. Conf Proc IEEE Int Conf Syst Man Cybern 2014:1489-1492 |
| Liew, Sook-Lei; Agashe, Harshavardhan; Bhagat, Nikunj et al. (2013) A clinical roadmap for brain--neural machine interfaces: trainees' perspectives on the 2013 International Workshop. IEEE Pulse 4:44-8 |
