A call to action: We need the right incentives to guide ethical innovation in neurotech and healthcare

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Ana Maiques, CEO and founder of neu­rotech com­pa­ny Neu­ro­electrics, writes up a com­pelling case in her recent arti­cle, sum­ma­rized thus:

“I strong­ly believe that Neu­rotech entre­pre­neurs can not afford not to be involved in neu­roethics. It is sim­ply not an option anymore.”

I share that belief and would like to take it one step further:

“I strong­ly believe that health­care prac­ti­tion­ers, researchers, exec­u­tives and reg­u­la­tors can not afford not to be involved in neu­roethics. It is sim­ply not an option anymore.”

Hav­ing spent 10+ years track­ing and ana­lyz­ing the grow­ing indus­try of dig­i­tal brain/ men­tal health and non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nolo­gies, let me share why I believe so, and why we will need to set incen­tives right.

Time­ly con­ver­sa­tion to have

Only ten years ago, neu­rotech large­ly remained the domain of research cen­ters and high-end med­ical cen­ters. Today, the indus­try is touch­ing mil­lions of prac­ti­tion­ers, patients and con­sumers world­wide, thanks to an explo­sion of low-cost, non-inva­sive and emi­nent­ly scal­able tech­nolo­gies that can be used to assess and/ or to improve brain and men­tal health.

At the recent 2019 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, which I helped pro­duce from May 7th to the 9th, Dr. Tom Insel –for­mer Direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tute for Men­tal Health (NIMH) turned Google exec­u­tive turned entre­pre­neur– sur­veyed the ongo­ing rev­o­lu­tion in dig­i­tal bio­mark­ers and ther­a­peu­tics and why it mat­ters: While brain/ men­tal health­care has failed so far behind oth­er areas of health, prob­a­bly due to the old axiom “you can’t man­age what you can’t mea­sure”, emerg­ing neu­ro­log­i­cal mon­i­tor­ing tech­nolo­gies can allow us to rem­e­dy that and help us iden­ti­fy prob­lems ear­ly and inter­vene early.

Mul­ti­ple oth­er speak­ers dur­ing the Sum­mit built upon Insel’s remarks shar­ing research, tech and exam­ples. Start-up Sana Health won the 2019 Brain­no­va­tions Pitch Con­test by pre­sent­ing a nov­el com­bi­na­tion of audio-visu­al stim­u­la­tion and neu­ro­feed­back train­ing to help alle­vi­ate chron­ic pain, while entre­pre­neurs, investors and researchers described the grow­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and risks brought for­ward by dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics and neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion – the lat­ter tech­nol­o­gy class, as described by Maiques in her piece, deserves sig­nif­i­cant atten­tion as it could mean a non-inva­sive, non-phar­ma­co­log­ic treat­ment for a vari­ety of conditions.

Antic­i­pat­ing risks, researchers Dr. Anna Wexler and Dr. Karen Rom­melfanger joined indus­try insid­er Jacque­line Stud­er on a fas­ci­nat­ing ses­sion about pri­va­cy and ethics, help­ing iden­ti­fy eth­i­cal prob­lems and poten­tial solu­tions. »Keep read­ing com­men­tary To Be Involved in Neu­roethics: A Must for Entre­pre­neurs and for Health­care as a Whole (requires sub­scrip­tion to AJOB Neu­ro­science or purchase)

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