Neuralink's Brain Implant Innovations and Their Potential Impact on Health and Social Care

Improving health and social care through innovation and entrepreneurship

Technology and innovation are key to the future of health and social care The UK National Health Service (NHS) is the core of our care system. It has remarkable strengths and, by international standards, is as competitive, efficient and – in outcomes per pound spent – as good as anything in the world. But, as is becoming increasingly clear, it faces formidable challenges. The population is
ageing. Chronic diseases such as diabetes are becoming more prevalent and already absorb most of the NHS budget.

Costs are rising but budgets and funding are not. Since it was created, the NHS budget has risen by 3.7% in real terms each year. In the last few years it has grown by less than half that rate. The impact on performance and waiting times is obvious. However, while the NHS is the core of healthcare, from firefighters to care assistants and housing officers, a range of public services have an eye on our wellbeing.

Furthermore, new research in Wales, conducted over 10 years and the first largescale evaluation of its kind, suggests that older people living in council housing where regular improvements were made, experienced up to 39% fewer hospital admissions for conditions such as breathing problems or for falls or other injuries. This underlies public health experts assertions that “social determinants” of health and wellbeing are critical. Indeed this is consistent with the World Health Organisation definition of good
health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.

Councils in England receive almost 5,000 requests for social care every day. Adult social services directors recently told ministers that for an extra £1bn annual funding they could support 50,000 older and disabled people to continue living at home.

However, as the US proves, simply throwing more resources at healthcare won’t bring sustainable improvements. In America, they spend twice as much as we do on healthcare but outcomes are no better than in the UK. That’s why reforms are as important as resources.

The world is on the verge of a huge leap forward in health and social care, driven by advances in knowledge and technology. An influx of new mobile and bio-devices will mean we will be able to check – and take greater control over – our health and care in a way never previously possible. These kinds of innovations will enable organisations to make better population and individual health and care decisions. Both NHS and social care managers and practitioners need to face outwards, to go with the tide of innovation and take advantage of advances in knowledge and technology to better target health and social care and improve outcomes, efficiencies and stakeholder satisfaction.

Case Study

In July 2016, Tesla founder Elon Musk launched tech start-up Neuralink Corporation an American neurotechnology company developing implantable brain–machine interfaces (BMIs) to build implants that connect human brains with computer interfaces via artificial intelligence.

At his launch of the technology on 16 July 2019, Musk said that the approaching technology would see groups of minuscule,  flexible electrode "threads" implanted into the human brain by a neurosurgical robot.

These threads detect and record the electrical signals in the brain, and transmit this information outside the body.

This has the potential to create a scalable high-bandwidth brain-machine interface (BMI) system, meaning that it connects the brain to an external device to form a brain-machine interface.

The goal is to use Neuralink to understand and treat different forms of brain or spinerelated disorders. For instance, paralysed humans could use the implanted device to control phones or computers.

However, Musk also envisions the implant as a means of enhancing your own brain, giving humans the option to achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence (AI). This could eventually lead to a future of "superhuman intelligence", according to Musk

As Musk explained at the Neuralink Launch Event in San Francisco on 16 July, the idea is to create a "well-aligned future" that mitigates the supposed existential threat of AI.

He and his team hope to test the system on a human patient before the end of 2020. Each group of threads could contain as many as 3,072 electrodes, which would be distributed across 96 threads.

Musk's Neuralink startup has also built a neurosurgical robot that is capable of inserting six threads into the human brain per minute.

Each thread is smaller than one tenth of the size of a human hair and contains 192 electrodes.

Each electrode group is encased inside a small implantable device that contains custom wireless chips, measuring four by four millimetres. The threads would be individually inserted into the brain "with micron precision" by a tiny needle at the end of the robot, which measures around 24 microns in diameter. This would be able to target specific parts of the brain and avoid damaging any blood vessels.

As Neuralink president Max Hodak told The New York Times, currently the operation would require drilling holes into the patient's skull to implant the threads. In the future, however, they hope to use a laser beam to pierce the skull with a series of tiny holes, which wouldn't be felt by the patient.

"As safe and painless" as laser eye surgery The implant would work by recording information emitted by neurons in the brain, as
explained in a video presentation at the event. The brain's neurons connect to form a large network through synapses. At these connection points, neurons communicate with each other using chemical signals called neuro transmitters, which are released in response to an electrical spike called "action potential".

When a cell receives enough of the right kind of neurotransmitter input, a chain reaction is triggered that causes an action potential, as the neurons relay messages to the synapses.

These action potentials produce an electric field that spreads from the neuron, and can be detected by placing electrodes nearby, allowing recording of the information represented by a neuron

You are part of the management team of a named United Kingdom local authority that works closely with the area clinical commission group (CCG). Having read about Neuralink’s BMIs you feel that the technology could be of particular benefit to a sector of the population your local authority serves.

Evaluate the characteristics of the population your local authority serves and, in so doing, evaluate the opportunity offered by local people who may benefit from the deployment of Neuralink’s BMI or such similar BMI technologies. You are required to use Bessant and Tidd’s (2015) model. Among others, Bessant and Tidd’s (2015) model includes the following dimensions (i) utility (product,  process, position, paradigm); (ii) market orientation (market pull, design driven, technology push, design driven); and (iv)  markatability (perceived relative advantage, observability, complexity, trialability, compatibility). (50 Marks)

Discuss and evaluate intrapreneurship in relation to offering BMI to your named local authority; particularly focussing on the role of the local authority’s and CCG’s mission and vision statements; in recognition of Bessant and Tidd (2015) entrepreneurial process model. (30 Marks)

Discuss how one current United Kingdom piece of legislation or government policy on health and social care delivery may impact your local authority’s decision whether or not to deploy BMI technologies. (20 Marks)