David Warner, MD, PhD, known as Dave by the children he served and admired, 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 health care in ways never before conceived. A participant in Loma Linda's MD/PhD program, Warner focused on the physiological basis of information processing. Applications of his research enabled his team of researchers to develop procedures, using off-the-shelf technologies, to help severely handicapped patients achieve goals never before thought possible. It was technology transfer with a heart. Warner studied the neurological system as an information processing network, a link between the mind and the outside world.
The first quadriplegic patient to benefit from Warner's creative mind was a baby girl named Crystal Earwood. Crystal was only 12 months old when she was paralyzed from the neck down in a terrible automobile accident. When Warner saw the baby for the first time six months later, her condition touched him deeply. She was a conscious, bright baby, just lying there, unable to move. Warner was motivated to design a computer system for Crystal. By using a bioelectric sensory band around her head, above her eyes, Crystal was able to move a Happy Face around on the screen of a computer terminal. In short, her eyes became her hands. It was the first time little Crystal had been able to do anything by herself since the accident. But it was a major achievement. One small step for Crystal—one giant step for the profoundly disabled.
Warner had obtained the bioelectric sensory band from graduate students at Stanford University. He figured if he could make it work with an 18-month-old, he could make it work with anybody. His next patient was an adult, a man also injured in an automobile accident. The electrical signals from his muscles were converted to music. "This is the first time I have been able to do something since the accident," the man replied. The technology had a great psychological benefit. It lifted the patient's depression.
Ashley Hughes, 7, of Claremont, California, paralyzed since birth, was the world's first "cybernaut." Ashley had never been in a swimming pool. However, with the help of a young man Ashley enthusiastically called "Dave," she went "swimming." Warner built Cindy Cyberspace, a mannequin head with two small TV cameras for eyes and two microphones for ears. When Warner carried Cindy into the swimming pool, Ashley, wearing 3-D glasses and stereo headphones, was able to watch and hear everything and squealed with delight.
"I feel like I'm really in the water," said Ashley. Seeing through the "eyes" of Cindy Cyberspace, Ashley was able to look over her backyard fence for the first time and climb a tree. Warner's team developed a computer interface system for Ashley. By using her well-disciplined cheeks, a mischievous wink, or her expressive eyebrows, Ashley could operate computer games, drive a remote control vehicle, and navigate through virtual reality. Ashley's story was featured on the front page of The San Gabriel Valley Tribune (August 15, 1994).
To Warner, this application of virtual reality was a quality-of-life issue.
"She's going to be the princess of the Internet," said Warner. "She's going to teach the others how to surf the Internet. Ashley was a cybernaut in training.
"Computers will be her way of life," said Jerry Hughes, Ashley's grandfather. "For Ashley, virtual reality is reality."
"Virtual reality is a very powerful training tool for the disabled," said Harry Murphy, director of the Center on Disabilities at California State University at Northridge. "This will take us places we haven't been before, in ways we haven't been before," he said.
Using a headset, Warner has been able to help patients in the Children's Hospital "fly" like a helicopter around the Medical Center. When asked by Ken Kashiwahara on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings," why she liked using the new technology, Ashley responded, "Cause I get to fly."
Word of Warner's achievements spread internationally by print and broadcast media. His work was covered by the news media in Austria, Norway, Slovenia, Italy, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, and across the United States. It was featured in The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, and in such magazines as Scientific American, Stern (Germany), and Virtual (Italy). Warner's work was featured on a number of television programs, such as "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings," "Beyond 2000," "Future Quest," "Quantum," "Life Choices," "America's Talking," "Nightline," and "CNN World News."
Warner made presentations at virtual reality conferences across the United States and around the world—35 during his senior year in medical school. His keynote speech at a conference in Monaco was translated into five languages. He made presentations at Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia National Laboratories, where his topics included "Prosocial Uses of Technology Developed for the Military." In 1993, Warner made a presentation, "Human-Computer Interface Technologies in Rehabilitation," to the California Medical Association. Inquiries about Warner's work came from rehabilitation institutes and even from the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
A special production featuring Warner, "Frontiers in Science and Technology," a laser disc produced for junior high and high school students, was designed to give children an example of a person who has done good things with sophisticated technology, to motivate them to enter science and help make the world a better place.