Heritage Snapshot: Part 70

David Warner, MD, PhD is a 1995 graduate of Loma Linda University School of Medicine. He entered medical school with a wealth of knowledge about computers and a valuable network of contacts with people in aerospace, the military, and entertainment. Warner matched existing computer technologies with healthcare in ways never before conceived. A participant in Loma Linda University’s MD/PhD program, Warner focused on the physiological basis of information processing. During a live nationwide broadcast from the Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital, technicians contacted by CNBC’s “America’s Talking” volunteered to get involved by offering the use of electronic servos, devices that are used in animatronics and robotics, to help Warner multiply his efforts on behalf of severely handicapped patients. Dr. Carolyn West, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Beyond 2000,” summarized Warner’s efforts: “Technology can help those impaired by circumstance to control their environment and so improves their quality of life. And the fact that this direct biological interface can do that while it’s helping them restore their motor function, makes it a game with a lot of winners.” Warner enjoyed working with children. “They start laughing,” he says, “… kids who haven’t laughed in a week. They start moving around in a higher degree of mobility … because they’re excited about something. They’ve had a positive experience.” People who are knowledgeable about virtual reality usually associate it with a futuristic-looking headset that puts the participant into different computer-generated virtual environments. Using the headset, Warner has been able to help cancer patients in the Children’s Hospital to “net” big fish in a giant “aquarium,” “fly” like a helicopter around the Medical Center, and explore a “house” with different rooms. Virtual reality has shown promise in patient education and psychiatry. A real-time performance animation system was used to encode facial expressions of an actor and then to generate a 3D talking head with realistic facial expressions that could interact with hospitalized children. The computer-generated cartoon teacher taught several classes in anatomy to a group of children assembled in a classroom and then made individual bedside appearances to children in isolation over the Children’s Hospital television system. Warner once helped a young man communicate by grunting—yes, grunting. The adult patient had experienced traumatic brain injury and could only make primitive sounds with his mouth. He was capable of making a variety of different sounds, but his “speech” was unintelligible. Using an off-the-shelf computer with sound-card voice recognition capabilities, Warner was able to link the patient’s verbal efforts with messages Warner and his team had recorded in their own voices on the memory of the computer. The patient would vocalize. The computer would “hear” his primitive sounds, recognize them, and translate them into the various messages. With off-the-shelf technology costing less than $1,000 and five minutes of instruction, the young man was able to communicate with clarity—by grunting. Warner’s work was just the beginning. Future achievements will be limited only by lack of funding. Even though Warner and his team were taking just baby steps, they were leading the world in human–computer interface technology and its relationship to physically challenged people of all ages. During his medical education, Warner worked with more than 100 spinal cord and brain trauma patients from throughout Southern California. CNN World News recorded Warner expressing his feelings about his efforts: “When one of those kids looks up and you see the smile on their face when you’ve given them a new capability … that is so incredible … so motivating.”