Paralyzed people may be able to walk with NYC innovation

Helping the paralyzed walk sounds like a miracle — but it may soon be a reality.

Over the last few years, New York’s largest hospital system, Northwell Health, has been developing bioelectric technology that allows paralyzed patients to move.

Bioelectric technology harnesses the body’s own electrical signals so it communicates properly with the nervous system. A paralyzed patient hooked up to a bioelectric device can feel and even move.

The hospital has already seen incredible applications.

“We had a patient named Kevin … totally paralyzed from the neck down after diving into a swimming pool,” Northwell CEO Michael Dowling explained. “Because of the technologies that we’ve developed at Northwell, for the first time in history, that patient can move his arms … When you touch his arms, he has a touch of feel, which opens up the possibility that, in the years to come, people who are paralyzed will walk again.”

The eventual goal is for the device to be portable and simple enough to use that a patient can take it anywhere — instead of only using it in a hospital lab.

Northwell is just one of many healthcare systems in New York making science fiction a reality.

Earlier this year, NYU Langone became one of the first hospitals in the world to transplant an animal organ into a human and the first to complete a dual transplant that gave a patient both a manmade heart pump and a pig kidney.

The kidney had been genetically modified to more closely resemble a human kidney. 

Lisa Pisano, the 54-year-old Langone patient, wasn’t a good candidate for human-organ transplants because she was battling multiple chronic conditions. Doctors believe the dual transplant extended her life.

Meanwhile, a number of New York-based startups are focused on improving the software and technology doctors rely on to heal patients.

Midtown-based Tempus is compiling the world’s largest database of clinical and molecular data from diseased patients. It’s analyzing each patient’s diseased cells to help doctors to determine what treatments and medicines may be most effective for combatting conditions such as cancer and cardiomyopathies.

Flatiron Health is focused on creating software that connects cancer research institutes across the globe so they can better communicate in the hopes of giving patients the most up-to-date care and keeping doctors apprised of what successful treatments their colleagues have used.

Komodoo Health in Flatiron helps patients find the best providers and treatment options in their area by offering a map with detailed information on providers and what treatments they offer.

These efforts are getting a boost from public investment.

Earlier this week, New York governor Kathy Hochul announced that the state is investing $150 million — the most of any state — into a cell and gene therapy research center in Long Island.

It’s the latest step in building a $430 million “Innovation Hub” that will focus on editing genes, or fixing mutations — a science that promises to some day cure cancer, cystic fibrosis, and heart disease. 

Hochul said last Tuesday, “We are leading the way in gene and cell therapy, a game-changing new form of medical treatment that repairs damaged cells and kills those that have mutated into tumors.”

And Dowling — who said he wouldn’t be alive without today’s medical technology — believes innovation has made this the best time in the world to be alive.

“I have a heart condition. I have three stents. If I had the problem I had in the 1970s, I wouldn’t be here now because I had a massive blockage,” he explained. “When I was taken to the hospital [ten years ago] within ten minutes, they identified a problem and 40 minutes later I had three stents and I walked out.

“We are very, very, very fortunate to be living now because what we can do is so much more than we were able to do 50 years ago.”