At the American Orthotic & Prosthetic Association National Assembly, Dr. George served as a panelist for a session titled "Powered Upper Extremity Bracing: A Review of Reimbursement, Current Technology, and Clinical Opportunities." Dr. George presented on next generation control systems for powered upper extremity braces. His talk featured work from PhD students Caleb Thomson, Connor Olsen, and Fredi Mino which show that stroke patients can use residual muscle activity from their paretic limb to provide dexterous control of the MyoPro exoskeleton. To achieve this, the Utah NeuroRobotics Lab uses high density EMG combined with deep learning.
This panel was in collaboration with Myomo, the leading manufacturer of powered upper-limb orthotics. In April this year, Myomo received new medicare reimbursement codes to fully cover the cost of the MyoPro exoskeleton. It is expected that the number of powered upper-limb orthoses are the market will sharply increase as a result.