At Medica 2016, Axilum Robotics, a spin-off company of medical robotics research group ICube, has announced its latest product to help patients living with chronic pain and other conditions.
Robot
Its latest product is the world’s first robot designed for transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a method which uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in the brain. It’s a treatment used for patients who suffer from depression and is used when other treatment methods have been exhausted.
The company’s TMS-Robot used a non-invasive, painless brain stimulation technique, implemented manually.
The idea of a robot assisted solution for TMS originated from Dr Jack Founcher, one of the pioneers of TMS in France.
Dr. Foucher expressed a need for a solution to automate the stimulate procedure to ensure precision and identical repeated procedures.
The automated procedure offers precision, repeatability of TMS sessions, compensation of patient’s motions, ease of use, operator safety and comfort, patient safety, access to large stimulation areas and permanent contact between the patient’s head and the coil monitored by force sensors.
The solution was presented at Medica 2016’s Innovation Zone.