A veteran of both SpaceX and General Electric, Alan Hamlet, along with Matthew Bellman, is the inventor of the Myocycle. The bicycle-like device provides exercise and functional electrical stimulation for people with paralysis, and offers hope to those with multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade, the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them. We'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:39

Helping people with paralysis. That's the subject of today's Radio Cade and with me, I have Alan Hamlet who is with a company Myolyn. Welcome, Alan.

Alan Hamlet: 0:47

Thanks for having me, Richard.

Richard Miles: 0:48

So Alan, let's start out by explaining the core technology, what Myolyn has done, how it works, and who it's supposed to help. Try to use no jargon. Make it as simple as possible, mainly for me, but also for our listeners. And then at the end we'll sort of get into the direction the company's going.

Alan Hamlet: 1:05

Okay, I'll do it again. So Myolyn's mission is to improve health and human performance by empowering people to move. And our first product Myocycle is essentially a stationary exercise bike designed for people who have paralysis. So a lot of people don't realize, but if someone has paralysis, you do something like a spinal cord injury or any damage to the central nervous system due to multiple sclerosis or traumatic brain injury, oftentimes the muscles and the nerves and the lower body itself are perfectly fine. They just can't hear what the brain is saying. So what Myolyn does with the Myocycle is we bypass the damage to the spinal cord and apply electrical stimulation using electrode pads that we place on the skin. The sticky adhesive backed electrode pads over target muscle groups, and we can apply a small amount of electrical current to stimulate those target muscles and get those muscles to contract. And by timing and coordinating the stimulation applied to those different muscle groups in a coordinated way, we can allow someone who is completely paralyzed form a functional motion. So the Myocycle allows someone who's completely paralyzed to actively participate in therapeutic cycling exercise using electrical stimulation, which we call FES, Functional Electrical Stimulation.

Richard Miles: 2:22

Okay. Functional electronic or electric?

Alan Hamlet: 2:24

Electrical.

Richard Miles: 2:24

Electrical. Okay. Alright. So now we know what it is and you're the principal inventor of this technology

Alan Hamlet: 2:30

The inventor was actually my co founder. We were actually both getting our PhDs in robotics at the University of Florida and the technology was really the topic of his PhD dissertation, so controlling the human body using electrical stimulation. So while we were still in grad school about five years ago, now, we started the company to take this technology to market and help people who are living with paralysis.

Richard Miles: 2:52

So Alan, let me ask you a bit about your