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This podcast's purpose is to bring together the field of neuroprosthetics/brain machine interfaces/brain implants in an understandable conversation about the current topics and breakthroughs.

We hope to replace needing to read scientific papers on new research in an easy to digest way.

People can share thoughts or ideas to facilitate 'idea sex' to make the field of brain implants a smaller and more personal space.

Nov 21, 2023

Steve Goetz is now the Chief Technology Officer at Motif Neurotech which is developing a minimally invasive neural implant for the treatment of depression and mental health issues. Steve was at Medtronic for 26 years before moving over to the startup landscape.

Top 3 Takeaways:

  •  "Starting a big program that you don't know how to finish is a very expensive endeavor, and so you want to really shake out all the science risk, all the technology risk,  be pretty sure you can execute a thing before you turn on that big engine because it's expensive once you go"
  • "We know stimulation of the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex is very efficacious in treatment-resistant depression.  Our question is, can we develop a cranial stimulator that can do that in the comfort of a patient's home on demand and with a dosing profile that is matched to that patient's acuity and severity that both treats depression and at some point in the future turns into a maintenance therapy that prevents relapse altogether. And what that looks like to us is a pea-sized stimulator that fits in a minimally invasive burr hole that sits on top of the dura, so not brain penetrating,  that delivers this therapy powered externally from a wearable, like a hat or a headband."

  • "For deep brain stimulation, there's a subspecialty of neurosurgery called functional stereotactic neurosurgery with on the order of hundreds of surgeons in the US. There are more that have the specialization to make a burr hole. You go from a few 100 to several 1000 people in the US who can do a burr hole. Over 200,000 burr holes are made in a given year in the US"

1:00 Do you want to introduce yourself better than I just did?

3:00 What was that smaller group within Medtronic?

8:30 What does the organizational structure look like at a place like Medtronic?

11:30 What do those teams look like?

16:00 Is each team working on a project?

18:15 CEITEC Nano Ad Sponsorship

18:45 What is Motif all about?

24:15 What is the success rate of TMS and what do you hope to achieve?

25:15 This isn't brain surgery but it is close to it, what's involved in this?

29:15 Could this surgery be done by a lower-skilled person than a neurosurgeon?

31:00 How does insurance reimbursement look like for Motif?

36:15 Why is this technology possible now?

 41:30 Your technology seems bikini-ready

42:45 What is the progress of your company?

45:00 What's the small company vs large company life like?

47:30 How long do big decisions take in a big company?

48:45 How is the pace in a small vs small company?

51:00 What is the perfect recipe for working in a meaningful company vs learning in another company?

53:45 Anything else you wanted to mention?