Doctors at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia recently performed a revolutionary procedure by temporarily implanting a brain-computer interface device onto a patient’s brain, writes Jo Craven McGinty for The Wall Street Journal.

Jeffrey Keefer was undergoing brain surgery to relieve Parkinson’s disease symptoms at the hospital. Since his skull would be open for hours anyway, he had agreed to participate in the experimental procedure.

The brain-computer interface unit is developed by Precision Neuroscience. It sat on the surface of the patient’s brain for 25 minutes. During that time, he did a series of exercises using his hands while engineers used the device’s readings to match his brain signals to his movements.

The aim is to train a device to provide paralyzed patients with the ability to operate a computer with their thoughts.

The procedure was successful, giving Precision the hope that it could receive premarket approval to implant the wireless device permanently in patients with paralysis from the FDA by 2028.

“We believe paralysis is a multibillion-dollar market in the U.S.,” said Michael Mager, co-founder and chief executive officer of Precision. “It’s premised on healthy reimbursement, and when I say healthy, I mean six-figure reimbursement is going to be required to create a sustainable industry.”

Read more about the revolutionary procedure and efforts to make it a standard of care at The Wall Street Journal.

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