Brain-Computer Interface Technology

 

China advances in brain-computer interface technology, aiming for US$900 per procedure



A Chinese brain-computer interface (BCI) company said it had seen positive results from three human implants, matching Elon Musk’s Neuralink in the number of human patients, as China prepares for wider commercialisation of the technology.

Beinao No 1, a semi-invasive BCI system developed by the Chinese Institute for Brain Research (CIBR) in Beijing and its affiliated start-up NeuCyber NeuroTech, completed their first three human implants between February and March this year, the companies said last week.

The Chinese government, meanwhile, is moving to support the market for BCI products, which are inching closer to commercialisation.

The local government in China’s central Hubei province on Monday released the country’s first pricing guidelines for the operation, stipulating that invasive BCI implants should cost 6,552 yuan (US$902) per procedure, and that the price of removal should be 3,139 yuan per procedure. The province set the fitting fee for a non-invasive BCI product at 966 yuan.

The Beinao system allowed paralysed patients, including a paraplegic patient with spinal cord injury and a hemiplegic stroke survivor, to exert mind control to operate computers and robotic arms. It can also decode and output Chinese speech of an ALS patient with speech disorder, according to the companies.

They were aiming to complete brain chip implants on 13 people this year, and to conduct formal clinical trials on around 50 patients after receiving regulatory approval next year, CIBR director Luo Minmin told reporters on Monday on the sidelines of the Zhongguancun Forum technology conference in Beijing, according to Reuters.

Neuralink, founded by Tesla founder Elon Musk in 2016, has also allowed three paralysed patients to receive implants. The company aimed for its product to be used by 20 to 30 patients this year, Musk said in January.

CIBR is among a group of Chinese firms looking to catch up with US companies, such as Neuralink, in the rapidly developing field of BCI, which lets people control external devices by interpreting their brain activity.

Last month, Shanghai-based BCI start-up StairMed, which claimed its solutions outperformed Neuralink’s in certain areas, raised 350 million yuan from major investors including China’s Qiming Venture Partners and Lilly Asia Ventures, a spin-off from US pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.

Hong Bo, a professor at the department of biomedical engineering at Tsinghua University’s School of Medicine, told the Zhongguancun Forum that his team aimed to provide BCI implants for 30 to 50 patients in China by the end of this year, according to state media reports.

The CIBR, established in 2018 by Beijing’s municipal government and several universities in the Chinese capital, said in a blog post on Monday that Beinao No 1 was moving closer to becoming a “mature commercial medical product”. It was aiming to provide standardised and replicable solutions for patients with paralysis or speech disorders around the world, the company said.

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