Originally from rural central Massachusetts, I am currently a junior at Princeton University studying neuroscience. My major interests before entering college were Middle Eastern politics and neuroscience. Spending summers before college working at an overnight special needs camp for campers with neurological disorders including epilepsy, Autism, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy led me to decide to go into medicine and neurology instead of academic neuroscience. I also spent a year living in the Middle East studying Hebrew, Arabic and the politics of the region before matriculating to university.

In college, I have pursued a neuroscience major, and applied (and was fortunately accepted) to an early admission program at Mount Sinai Medical School, which allowed me to focus on neuroscience rather than pre-medical requirements as an undergraduate. Outside of the classroom, I've had a couple of different focuses. Of note, I spent much of my freshman and sophomore years co-founding a chapter of a national organization called Camp Kesem, and running our chapter’s first summer camp for kids whose parents and sibling suffer from cancer. I have also become very involved in the entrepreneurship community on campus, taking part in a delegation called TigerTrek Silicon Valley. We met with venture capitalists, founders, and visionaries in the Bay Area including those of medical technology companies. This experience inspired me to work towards bringing my visions to fruition, using innovation to positively impact healthcare. In the time that I have before matriculating to Mount Sinai, I have been working on a project with fellow students that we hope will one day turn into a company. The product we’ve built, we believe, will allow for more efficient time management at healthcare centers and increase the amount of their day healthcare professionals can spend with patients.

Essay: Responsive Neurostimulation

While choosing one technology was difficult, I believe that “responsive neurostimulation,” a new surgery and device for treating epilepsy has massive potential to improve the lives of disabled epileptic patients. I argue this case both because of the technology itself and the paradigm shift in medical technology that it represents.

Responsive neurostimulation (RNS), is a new technological technique that is intended to treat adults with intractable, medically refractory epilepsy. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2013, it aims to prevent seizures throughout the day before they happen. A surgery is done where an electrical neurostimulator is placed under the skull with leads implanted at the focal points of the seizures. The device communicates wirelessly with a programming center, where physicians and programmers can observe neural activity recorded from the patient’s brain by the device. A proprietary algorithm then analyzes the neural data coming in over time and identifies that specific patient’s neural pre-cursors to seizures. It is then able to automatically provide neurostimulation in the form of direct current when those activity patterns are detected, which prevents the seizures from occurring. The stimulator then, without any action from the patient, is able to proactively prevent seizures throughout the day and allow these individuals to continue their daily lives free from impediments. Other than being a huge improvement to the quality of life of these patients, it also helps to avoid the associated medical risks such as brain trauma, bruises and cuts that can result from seizures.

There are aspects of this epilepsy treatment that represent what I believe to be the future of disability treatment. Crucially, it represents a massive improvement to the lives of these patients, essentially turning a disability into the inconvenience of the device and surgery. But it is also something that happens passively without patient action preemptively. In other words, this treatment may foreshadow the next generation of medical devices, which preempt issues rather than treat their symptoms, by collecting data that allows the devices to predict flare-ups before they occur. If other devices, both for neurological conditions and otherwise, can learn from responsive neurostimulation, we have much to look forward to in the next generation of medical technology.