Over the last year and a half, The ALS Association has been working with authors from Association Chapters, ALS centers and clinics and other ALS organizations to rewrite the original Living with ALS manual series, adding new and relevant content. The series has been developed for people living with ALS, family members, caregivers and other healthcare professionals, as well as our chapter and national staff.
Evy Reviers serves as the CEO of ALS Liga, our sister organization in Belgium and is a champion in ALS patient advocacy and care. She and her organization stepped up to partner with Dr. Desain and his team that develops NoiseTag brain computer interface (BCI), who won the ALS Assistive Technology Challenge in Dublin this past December. Through this collaboration, patients in Belgium will be able to try out the NoiseTag BCI to optimize its function and usability, thereby making it the best product possible.
A type of assistive technology, called brain computer interface (BCI), has been around for years with much room for improvement. We sat down with the 2016 ALS Assistive Technology Challenge winner, Dr. Peter Desain from Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, who invented NoiseTag BCI that gives a novel spin on BCI technology.
Former Tennessee Titans linebacker Tim Shaw’s unexpected diagnosis of ALS doesn’t stop him from finding hope and advocating on behalf of those faced with ALS. He has also been an incredible ally of The ALS Association in fighting this disease.
After over a year in the making, the ALS Assistive Technology Challenge came to its culmination at the finale event during the ALS/MND International Alliance Meeting in Dublin. All five finalist teams came together to show off their prototypes to our esteemed judging team.
The CReATe Consortium is an ALS Association supported strategic initiative dedicated to the discovery and validation of ALS biomarkers and understanding the relationship between the clinical presentation and genetic background of people living with ALS.
In 2016, a significant number of ALS research discoveries, advances in clinical trials, collaborations and strategic initiatives all accelerated the pace of discovery in finding treatments and a cure for ALS.
Earlier this month, The ALS Association was happy to travel to Dublin to participate in the 27th International Symposium on ALS/MND. The Symposium, the largest ever, brought together top ALS researchers and clinicians from all over the world. People in attendance, including those from The ALS Association, used the hashtag #alssymp during the event. Here are some of our favorites!
After over a year in the making, The ALS Association in partnership with Prize4Life awarded the ALS Assistive Technology prize in Dublin during the ALS/MND International Alliance Meeting. We are thrilled to award one of the top prizes to Dexter Ang and David Cipoletta, two young entrepreneurs that founded Pison Technology based out of Massachusetts. They blew the judges away with their easy-to-use, self-contained communication system based on muscle EMG signals.
You may have heard that IBM's supercomputer, Watson, competed on Jeopardy! and is now being used to solve everything from business problems to diagnosing cancer. Today, we were thrilled to hear the latest Watson news: Working with a team at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, headed by Dr. Robert Bowser, Watson helped researchers discover 5 new ALS genes.