Silicon does not just make women’s assets look good in the body. Apparently, the British engineers gave it a more substantial healing element through Active Book. The new silicon microchip is termed “Active Book”, and rightly so since it has the shape of a book and the activity within that will help jumpstart even the most paralyzed of muscles.
Professor Andreas Demosthenous gives us a layman’s explanation of what it can do to patients with paraplegia or paralyzed limbs: ”Stimulation of more muscle groups means users can perform enough movement to carry out controlled exercise such as cycling or rowing.” Imagine all that wonder accessible from an object which is just the size of your fingernail!
This is just one of the multi-billion pound Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) projects that are being funded to provide real life solutions through the maximization of technology. This particular project was created by Prof. Demosthenous’ team in University College of London. They also got some assistance and collaboration with engineers from Germany’s Freiburg University and Ireland’s University of Cork.
Let’s not get into the technical and scientific aspect of the thing, for other websites will be more than willing to do that for you. It’s sufficient for us to know that the book-shaped contraption has electrodes for its pages. It is primarily a muscle group stimulator that will access the dead (to be resurrected!) nerves via the remote way. Compared to existing technology, this is convenient. Old approaches to healing the paraplegics require that numerous connections be made to the muscle being targeted. And they are as bulky as having back braces or Frankenstein himself installed on one’s back. Physical therapy has touch to it and can be found more attractive and personal for some, but when your legs are no longer moving, the “live wire” effect of Active Book to your nerves as opposed to years of manual physical treatment is a better option.
The spaces between the Active Book sandwiches the nerves at a microscopic level. Prof. Demosthenous enlightens us further: “The work has the potential to stimulate more muscle groups than is currently possible with existing technology because a number of these devices can be implanted into the spinal canal.”” The spinal canal is extremely narrow and sensitive; all the other approaches for healing problems there fail when compared to what they have done with Active Book.
Trials are to be made next year; small wonder if there will be a lot of willing volunteers, given the hassles of having almost good-for-nothing legs and difficult treatment options. More and more tech-savvy doctors will definitely be open to the idea. And if medical mainstream refuses to take it, there are about a thousand alternative approaches to health that can welcome this with open arms.
The fun does not end there, apparently. The brainy and innovative British engineers who developed Active Book are also looking into more possibilities for the technology. For one, it’s already possible to have multiple implants to help in other bodily tasks like bladder and bowel movements. Incontinence will be a thing of the past, so to speak.
And who knows where else it can go…
