Dec 10, 2022

Lothar Krinke is the CEO and Board Member of Newronika which is an adaptive Deep Brain Stimulator company looking to improve patient outcomes in things like Parkinson's and Essential Tremor.

***This podcast is sponsored by Iris Biomedical, check out their Neurotech Startup Services here***

Top 3 Takeaways:

• "the one thing we do need to address is really the cost. The cost driver of Deep Brain Stimulation isn't the manufacturing of the system. Now, that's not cheap either it's certainly less than $10,000. How expensive is brain surgery, particularly functional brain surgery? How expensive is it to have all the pre-operation preparation? So I think the field needs to think about how we can lower the cost of Deep Brain Stimulation to make it available to not hundreds of thousands of patients, but literally millions of patients."
• "I don't think AI or even machine learning has been sufficiently applied in our space. People do it and they talk about it, but if you look at other fields, even EEG, use of AI or machine learning are much more penetrated."
• "In my mind it is almost unconscionable that only 15% of patients that could benefit from Parkinsons, from DBS do. So somehow we need to have a battle cry. We need to have the responsibility to make this therapy available to more people. And the way to do that is less invasive more automation and lower cost"

0:45 Do you want to introduce yourself better than I just did?

2:15 "Why is Deep Brain Simulation so exciting for you?"

3:15 "Can explain what Deep Brain Stimulation is and what it's a treatment for?"

5:30 "How did you get into the field?"

6:30 Iris Biomedical ad sponsorship

7:15 You thought earlier that DBS was too invasive but now changed your mind, why?

8:15 What are the biggest impediments to DBS?

12:15 Why is the Newronika DBS better than the alternatives?

14:30 Why is adaptive DBS better?

16:30 "What are some of the biggest challenges right now at Newronika?"

20:30 You are in Minneapolis, West Virginia, and Milan, how are you able to travel so much?

21:30 "Why aren't you in Gainesville? I was surprised how big the DBS field is here."

22:15 "For people starting out in the field, do you have any advice?"

25:30 " What's a big mistake or wrong direction that you see researchers or people on your field going down?"

27:45 "Could you explain the beta and gamma waves?"

32:45 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?"