Strokes can have devastating consequences. Improving recovery outcomes will require new thinking. My grandmother’s stroke years ago shook my family. I saw her in fits over the loss of precious skills—-the simple joy of typing, gone. The road to recovery is difficult, but the future of rehabilitation is bright and very interactive.
On this episode we’ll speak with Dr. Jon Krakauer, neurologist, director of the Brain Learning and Movement Lab and professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, and Chief Medical and Scientific Advisor to MindMaze, a company developing such telerehabilitation and digital therapeutics for neurologic conditions.
Dr. Krakauer is a scientist and entrepreneur at the forefront of virtual recovery research. He is the head of one of the most multidisciplinary laboratories you’ll come across (the BLAM Lab at Johns Hopkins) in which his team conducts foundational neuroscience research. He and his team have developed digital medicines for stroke rehabilitation and other applications. And he is not afraid to challenge conventional approaches or thinking.
Researchers and entrepreneurs like Dr. Krakauer are building entire virtual worlds to help patients navigate recovery more interactively and effectively. A new wave of digital therapeutics leveraging software, devices, even robotics to deliver novel experiences to patients is coming online.
My grandmother never fully regained the ability to type. The work of Dr. Krakauer, collaborators, and other scientists working on this new type of digital neuropharmacology could potentially engage more of the brain to drive better outcomes for patients in the future.
Virtual recovery is here, and this medicine cabinet is in the cloud.