Innovations in MedTech for Epilepsy

Panel discussion

Around 1–2% of the world’s population have epilepsy. Of these, 30% do not benefit sufficiently from medications and so continue to have seizures. This has enormous impacts on their lives. This webinar will present new advances in research and development of medical technologies that are being applied to help people with epilepsy. This includes medical devices for continuous, long-term monitoring, for seizure forecasting and providing new treatments. Hear from experts on how MedTech is providing solutions for epilepsy.

Panelists

Prof Mark Cook

Director, Graeme Clarke Institute, The University of Melbourne

Professor Mark Cook is Director of the Graeme Clark Institute, the Sir John Eccles Chair of Medicine and Director of Clinical Neurosciences at St Vincent’s Hospital. He is recognised internationally for his expertise in epilepsy management, particularly imaging and surgical planning. After completing specialist training in Melbourne, he undertook an MD thesis while working as Brain Research Fellow at Queen Square, London. He returned to St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne to continue his interest in management of complex epilepsy. He has worked closely with engineers for most of his career, developing novel therapies for epilepsy. His interests include experimental models of epilepsy and seizure prediction, and he has led the commercialisation of an implantable seizure detection device about to start clinical trials.

Dr Philippa Karoly

Senior Research Fellow, Biomedical Engineering, The University of Melbourne

Dr Philippa (Pip) Karoly is working to develop an innovative, patient-specific approach to seizure forecasting. Using sophisticated computational techniques, she is using long-term data from brain recordings and environmental, behavioural and physiological factors to develop useful seizure likelihood models. For three years, Pip also worked as a software engineer for the Australian medical technology company, Seer. At Seer, she developed a mobile app that provides people with epilepsy insight into their seizure patterns. Now, her research combines this app data with wearable devices and neural implants to generate real-time insights into seizure likelihood. To achieve this goal, Pip maintains close ties with industry partners, providing the optimal balance to translate medical research into innovative clinical solutions.

Dr John Heasman

Chief Operating Officer, Epiminder

Dr John Heasman is the COO of Epi-Minder Pty Ltd. Epi-Minder is an Australian venture launched in July 2018 to develop and commercialise Minder™, an ultra-long term implantable EEG monitoring system for use in the management of epilepsy. John has over 20 years’ experience in medical devices and provides specialist expertise, operations management and leadership for the local and global activities of Epi-Minder. Prior to joining Epi-Minder, John was a senior manager at Cochlear Limited, working across a variety of R&D efforts that included surgical diagnostics, remote care, signal processing and device diagnostics. John started his career in medical devices through the completion of a PhD that investigated the use of brain control interfaces for use with upper limb neuroprostheses.

Prof David Grayden

Clifford Chair of Neural Engineering, Director, MedTech Platform, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Melbourne

Professor David Grayden is Clifford Chair of Neural Engineering in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and IT (FEIT) and the Graeme Clark Institute for Biomedical Engineering, and is Director of the MedTech Platform, FEIT. David’s main research interests are in understanding how the brain processes information, how best to present information to the brain using medical bionics, such as the bionic ear and bionic eye, and how to record information from the brain, such as for brain-machine interfaces.