Cambridge Consultants Blog
Product development in the blink of an eye
By Patrick Pordage - Last updated: Monday, August 23, 2010
Innovative product development isn’t always about creating the next best consumer product. Clients tend to approach us from a whole range of sectors, but you can categorise the majority of them into asking one of four questions, one of which is “Can you cost reduce my product?”
A classical example of this reduction in cost was for a highly – and I mean highly – niche sector of the market. Dr. Jonathan Wolpaw is the director of the BCI unit of the Wadsworth Center, part of the New York State Department of Health. BCI stands for Brain-Computer Interface. Dr Wolpaw has more than a passing interest in helping people with severe paralysis to communicate with the outside world and some of his patients may even be entirely “locked in” to their bodies: their minds are functioning perfectly, but they cannot move a single muscle to communicate in any way. It’s easy to envisage how the capacity for simple communication would greatly improve the quality of lives.
Dr Wolpaw and his colleagues created a fantastic system that could convert brain waves into computer control commands – - without the need for electrodes implanted in the brain. In essence the system works by registering electric impulses created by the brain which can be measured along the surface of the scalp. This video (towards the bottom of the page) produced by Wadsworth Centre explains in more detail just how the system works: BCI video.
Brilliant technology without a doubt, so what was our role? Well, when we were introduced to the technology about 4 years ago it was expensive and limited to a lab setting. Our role was to transform a brilliantly engineered and technically complex research system into an easy-to use, more portable system suitable for patients and their caregivers – at a fraction of the cost. In short we had to take something that was costing tens of thousands of dollars and reduce it to under $5,000, in order for it to be reimbursed under the US healthcare system. Here’s a picture of what we created and a link to the press release we issued at the time:
For more information on ‘locked in’ syndrome, follow this ‘Wiki’ link. And for a truly remarkable book by someone who was suffering locked in syndrome (he dictated each letter of each word by blinking!), you could always try ‘The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly’ by Jean-Dominique Bauby.
We get asked nearly every day if we can help a company to make their product cheaper to produce, and the answer is normally yes. So whilst this isn’t the most recent example of the work we’ve done, I do think it’s a great example of where top class engineering can achieve.
