Jeremiah Robison is the founder and CEO of Cionic, an innovative company that builds lightweight and durable bionic clothing driven by powerful algorithms that adapt in real time to each individual’s mobility needs. He is a proponent and an advocate for creating better solutions for people with mobility issues caused by neurological conditions and illnesses such as cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, stroke, and more.
Summary
In this episode, Jeremiah gives us a peek into what human augmentation is. He makes us understand the spectrum of abilities of the human body and how technology may be used to superpower those abilities.
If you think that Bionic Clothing is Sci-Fi, this is an episode you should definitely listen to.
Audience Questions
[00:34:45] I know it’s a long way ahead but do you see at some point in time, people with neurological diseases (which are genetic) get benefitted and be able to do their work independently (i.e. without any support) . For example: SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy), the disease is not just restricted to gait but the entire motor skills are compromised. I really hope innovations/technology advancements like these will be able to assist Type III/IV if not Type I & II.
Chivukula Koundinya – Systems Software Engineer @ HPE
[00:38:24] A person who is quadriplegic/paraplegic will not have sensation on lower part of the body. Will bionic clothing help in informing caretaker or patient about the urge to urinate? Many suffer from not able to sense or feel it and hence a constant check is needed.
Umashankar Subramanya — Manager, R & D
Topical Questions
[00:03:32] You talk about – human augmentation. Before we get into the weeds, just maybe tell our listeners, what do you mean by human augmentation?
[00:07:35] People with neurological motor-disabilities like cerebral palsy or stroke patients – what are the challenges that they face and what is the standard of care today?
[00:11:35] What is this bionic clothing like? What does it do?
[00:20:36] Tell us what is the role of AI in your product? So where do you use AI and how critical is it for the product?
[00:23:05] What do you expect to learn or what are the goals of the clinical trial or if you’ve already gone through it, what did you learn from it?
[00:28:04] Do you expect to see differences when you test this product on people of different ethnicities or regions?
Quotable Quotes
[00:04:19] When I think about human augmentation, I think about how we can marry technology to the human to overcome some limitations, and it’s not just the limitations of people who might have a disease or an injury.
[00:11:55] Bionic clothing is to create a system that can analyze human movement, that can predict what is going to happen in the body and then to actually have a closed loop actuation based on that.
[00:27:15] I think this is important for anyone who’s building a technology company in the space of healthcare – you really ought to have the discipline to go through the approvals process via the FDA.
[00:32:56] I think some of the bigger challenges are yet to come – as with any novel technology coming out into healthcare, there’s a challenge of who’s going to pay for it?
[00:38:00] We want innovations to come at software speeds and software costs versus hardware speeds and hardware cost.
[00:42:08] I would love for people to think about the art of the possible and the recognition that people on the disability spectrum are just like all of us.
Notable Mentions
[00:05:12] Neuralink
Connect
LinkedIn: Jeremiah Robison
Twitter: @jerobi
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