JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A breakthrough technology is giving patients with spinal cord injuries the hope to walk again.
Brooks Rehabilitation Hospital in Jacksonville is the only facility in the country offering patients treatment with Cyberdyne’s Hybrid Assistive Limb.
“It’s an exoskeleton that reads the signals from the patient’s nervous system,” said Bob McIver, clinical technology director.
The HAL system picks up faint bioelectric signals in the muscles and the machine translates them into movement. Over time, the brain and the body repair the broken connection, McIver explained.
First Coast News followed the treatment of Chris Howell for almost 12 weeks. He suffered a C5 spinal cord injury in 2011 from a car crash.
The progress he made is something you have to see to believe. Watch the video above.