Multidisciplinary paper presented at WeRobot 2015

This past weekend, I presented a paper at this year’s WeRobot conference on robotics, law, and policy. It was called, “Personal Responsibility in the Age of User-Controlled Neuroprosthetics.” I was accompanied by my awesome co-authors: Patrick Moore, Margaret Thompson, and Jeff Herron. The audience was high-spirited and curious: they wanted to know more about how we were able to collaborate across fields more than they wanted to know about the details of the paper. ;) Here’s an brief press release with more information:

On Saturday, a team of CSNE researchers—with law student Patrick Moore—took part in a discussion about “Personal Responsibility in the Age of User-Controlled Neuroprosthetics,” one of eight papers accepted by conference organizers. In the paper, authors tell the story of Janet Parsons, 64, who is living with an advanced stage of Parkinson’s disease. Her disease has not been responsive to conventional therapy, making her a prime candidate for implantation of a deep brain stimulation (DBS) system.

Janet is not a real person, the authors note. And this type of system is not widely available at the current time. To date, the US Food and Drug Administration has approved DBS as a treatment for essential tremor, Parkinson’s disease, dystonia and obsessive compulsive disorder. Medtronic, the Minnesota-based medical device manufacturer, said that more than 125,000 patients worldwide have received DBS therapy with one of their systems.