Meeting Summaries

Oral Abstract Presentations Session

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Panelists from left to right: Cynthia Kubu, Eran Klein, Jasmine Tung, Marcello Ienca and Veljko Dubljevic (moderator).

Jasmine Tung (Western University) shared with the audience the process of developing a novel brain computer interface to communicate with patients who suffered a traumatic brain injury. Jasmine discussed the challenges of such an approach and described a thorough and rigorous methodology to overcome these challenges.

We then heard from Cynthia Kubu (Cleveland Clinic) on the goals of patients with Parkinson’s disease undergoing treatment with deep-brain stimulation. Kubu showed compelling data that supported how these goals shift over the course of treatment, and she explored the implications of her findings for traditional ethics considerations such as informed consent.

Up next was Eran Klein (University of Washington) who described the results of a stakeholder survey on ethical guidelines for brain-computer interface research. Klein put forward candidate principles such as care for subjects, modesty, inclusivity and justice and called for an expanded discussion on this topic that involves a wider range of stakeholders.

Closing the session was Marcello Ienca (University of Basel) who described his literature review of patents and research on assistive technology for the care of older adults. Ienca described potential challenges for technology adoption and suggested moving from a reactive model of technology assessment to a proactive model that harnesses participatory design.

Each speaker delivered an engaging, high quality and high impact presentation. The session concluded with a lively Q&A period as each of the talks elicited reactions, comments and questions from audience members.

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Presenters from left to right: Marcello Ienca, Jasmine Tung, Eran Klein and Cynthia Kubu.

– Julie Robillard, University of British Columbia, Canada