Health-e Law Podcast Ep. 23
The Future of Brain Tech With Dr. Newton Howard, Founder and CEO of ni2o
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Listen to the podcast released March 24, 2026, here: https://www.sheppard.com/en/insights/podcasts/health-e-law-episode-23-the-future-of-brain-tech-with-dr-newton-howard
Welcome to Health-e Law, Sheppard’s podcast exploring the fascinating health tech topics and trends of the day. In this episode, partner and host Michael Orlando welcomes Dr. Newton Howard, founder and CEO of ni2o, to discuss KIWI, the AI-driven brain implant his company is developing. Dr. Howard also shares where he sees this technology taking healthcare in the next decade, and the privacy and ethical considerations surrounding technology with such profound implications for the human mind.
About Dr. Newton Howard
Dr. Newton Howard is the founder and CEO of ni2o, a neurotechnology company developing AI-powered brain-computer interfaces to treat debilitating neurological disorders and ultimately enhance human cognitive performance. A neuroscientist, inventor and professor, he holds advanced degrees in Mathematics and Neurosurgery from Oxford University and in Cognitive Informatics and Medical Sciences from the Sorbonne.
Dr. Howard’s career spans academia, the U.S. military and the private sector, with professorships at Oxford, Georgetown University and MIT, where he directed the Synthetic Intelligence Lab. His foundational scientific contributions—among them the Theory of Intention Awareness, the Fundamental Code Unit and the Brain Code—have opened new pathways in predictive intelligence and the diagnosis and treatment of neurological conditions. His research has made its way into technologies used by millions of people every day, including Wi-Fi hotspots, Google Earth and Google Translate, and he has collaborated extensively with the Department of Defense on advanced defense applications of brain science and AI.
Dr. Howard also founded the Howard Brain Sciences Foundation, which funds research in brain disease and neurological treatment, and C4ADS, a data-driven think tank focused on global conflict and transnational security.
About Michael Orlando
Michael Orlando is a partner in Sheppard’s San Diego (Del Mar) office. He is team leader of the firm’s Technology Transactions team, a member of the Life Sciences, Healthcare and Artificial Intelligence teams, and co-leader of the firm’s Digital Health & Innovation team. Michael has more than 20 years of experience advising health technology companies, insurers, healthcare systems and providers, academic medical centers and research institutions, medical device manufacturers, and pharmaceutical and wellness companies on intellectual property and business transactions in key strategic areas, including EHR systems procurement and integration, telehealth, mobile health applications, clinical decision support technologies, artificial intelligence, data use, wearable devices, remote patient monitoring, and other medical devices, research and collaborations, patent licenses, software licenses, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, revenue cycle management, and other outsourcing transactions.
Michael founded a software-as-a-service company before entering private practice and completed an in-house secondment at a publicly traded biotechnology company, an experience that informs his practical and business-focused approach to client engagements.
Transcript
Mike Orlando:
From hospital boardrooms to startup war rooms, this is Health-e Law. Powered by Sheppard’s Digital Health and Innovation team, we bring you quick and candid conversations with industry leaders, bringing sharp analysis and critical insights into what’s next.
Welcome to this episode of Health-e Law. I’m your host, Mike Orlando, a partner at Sheppard, and my guest today is Dr. Newton Howard. Dr. Howard is a distinguished brain and cognitive scientist known for his pioneering work in computational neuroscience, artificial intelligence and neurobiology. He has held professorships at MIT, Georgetown University and the University of Oxford, and is the founder of MIT’s Mind Machine Project, MIT’s Synthetic Intelligence Lab and Oxford’s Computational Neuroscience Laboratory. Dr. Howard’s research also spans quantum biology, neural coding and is widely recognized for his theory of intention awareness and brain code. An accomplished author and inventor, he has contributed to over 30 patents, including the implantable brain device, KIWI.
Welcome, Dr. Howard. I’m really excited for our discussion today, and I have so many questions.
Dr. Newton Howard:
Thank you. Thank you.
Mike Orlando:
What is ni2o and what is your mission?
Dr. Newton Howard:
ni2o stands for Neurons Input to Output. It was a company that we formed that is a spin out of Oxford Lab to fight the neurodegenerative disorder with tools that may or may not be mature at this time, like BCI, brain computer interfaces, and the BSD brain stimulation. And the company accomplished that mission by producing a device known as the KIWI device.
Mike Orlando:
Okay. So, you’ve pioneered several theories and technologies on brain science, and how have these innovations shaped your approach to real world neurological disorders in your work at ni2o?
Dr. Newton Howard:
Essentially, the foundation of thoughts is how the brain operates, and when does it cease to operate in an orderly manner, and identifying these processes and identify when they will intervene to correct them.
Mike Orlando:
So, tell us about ni2o’s product, KIWI. What does that stand for and how does it work?
Dr. Newton Howard:
KIWI is a chip size of 1.2 by 2.2 millimeter. And it is a deep brain stimulator, an intelligent one that gets placed in the depths of the brain in an area called the subthalamic nucleus in the midbrain. And it’s supposed to compensate for the damage that is caused in the neurons that secretes dopamine, which causes the condition known as Parkinson’s.
Mike Orlando:
So how does this technology, metal and electricity connect to chemicals and biological materials? I mean, it’s fascinating and frankly hard for most people like myself to get their head around, no pun intended. Can you explain a little bit more about how these brain devices work?
Dr. Newton Howard:
Sure. The brain is known to be essentially a machine that operates with chemicals known as neurotransmitters and as electrical gradients; it’s the area which is electrophysiological processes. And what we intended to show is that it also operates with light optogenetically. And when you are able to secrete the neurotransmitters’ dopamine at the appropriate level, then movement disorder and cognitive disorders are restored and the person comes back to normality.
When you are not able to secrete this dopamine at the adequate level, you need a stimulation of some sort. In this case, we choose a modality of electrophysiological modality to stimulate the production of this dopamine neurotransmitters in an adequate level that addresses the issue or the deficits of the disorder. When both fails, then we escalate it to the level of genetics, which is a structural level and building the areas that are damaged to be functioning again.
Mike Orlando:
So I know your product uses artificial intelligence. Can you explain how AI is used as part of the KIWI device?
Dr. Newton Howard:
Sure. Well, the way AI plays a role here is that traditionally you would take the spike train or basically the peaks and valleys of the firing mechanisms, and you use that data to interpret the working and the inner working of the circuit and time intervals and duration and intensity and whatnot. AI comes in and looks at the whole thing as a probability, as a state of probabilities, and interprets that into things that are meaningful, as well as extracting the particular features of these fine sequences and translates that into a language that is intercepted between the neurons and are able to be directed again in a form of modulation pattern that is intelligent.
Mike Orlando:
This is truly fascinating to see how this works. How is early detection important for how ni2o proposes to treat Alzheimer’s?
Dr. Newton Howard:
In the early work that I did on Parkinson’s, we learned that early detection, meaning identifying the symptoms and indications of the disease with a condition before a clinical diagnosis is issued, is very important to the management of the disease and the disease modifying strategy that you’re going to apply. And we identified that you can find that out as early as 20 years plus in the case of Parkinson’s and similarity also in the case of Alzheimer’s from body movement, from speech content, from gait, walking and whatnot. And some elements of the work was focused on identifying the disease from, and its comorbidity from, as early time as 20 years ahead of onset through some technological deployment of sensor tools.
Mike Orlando:
So interesting. I really think the next step in neuroscience as part of our general health is really going to be truly important. And I want to turn next to discussing the future of neuroscience and healthcare generally. We heard recently at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference that neuroscience specialties are going to be a key part of the future business model for health systems. And with the technology you’re working on for Alzheimer’s, and you mentioned Parkinson’s and I think ALS and stroke or some other things that you’re working on, can you share your vision for how the future of brain health and these types of devices will work as part of our health system and the treatment and monitoring of these types of diseases in the next decade?
Dr. Newton Howard:
So modern healthcare is not looking at preventative and tailored solution for specific diseases and whatnot of targeted medicine. The induction of neuroscience and looking at the brain as a system will give us like an early warning system for these disease condition, various disease conditions. So you’re able to detect an anomaly in the pituitary or the hormone system just from looking at scanning the brain and interpreting these scans at that deeper holistic level. Various treatments and various areas of medicine will play a role in that. And you’ll find that in the future going for brain health would be like going to the dentist where you do it at least once or twice a year to optimize and to efficiently discharge whatever conditions that are likely to come on the horizon.
Mike Orlando:
How far away do you think we are from having the type of technologies we need to do those types of scans and monitoring of your brain to really make this type of treatment plausible?
Dr. Newton Howard:
We’re living in that era now. So you see things rolling out from startups world and from the labs and S&T environments. As we speak, the deployment is not catching up as fast, but we’re living in that era now. So it’s not going to happen, it’s happening.
Mike Orlando:
So Newton, I want to turn to the topic of ethical and legal risks associated with these types of brain-connected technologies. I love sci-fi, this is a fascinating area, but it seems we are getting really close to what used to seem impossible, frankly. What are some things you worry about if we deploy these technologies without guardrails, and who should be responsible for guarding them?
Dr. Newton Howard:
Deploying these technologies without guardrails is a risk in any technology, but in this particular technology, it is higher risk because of its dual use nature. It can be used for good or for bad. It could be used for treatment or for enhancement, where enhancement is not warranted and the potential for abuse is really, really high. The mechanisms that we guard the system, from our engineering perspective, is basically tools that we implement in the cybersecurity components of these systems, but there have to be certain regulations coming from state and federal on its use, and its proper use, that dictates from the top down when it’s obtained and how it’s used so that it’s not abused.
Mike Orlando:
Yeah. I can see a lot of problems that potentially could arise from the use of this kind of technology to basically tap the brain for information. And I know there’s some regulations already that some states have passed. California, Colorado have brain privacy laws and there’s that potential bill in the Senate called the MIND Act. And I just want to ask you about the privacy question. How do you see individual privacy being affected by the brain tech, and how would you advise the industry to simultaneously address health dignity with privacy?
Dr. Newton Howard:
There is definitely a lot of privacy concerns that emerge from it. It is beyond HIPAA also, because your ability to control the specific region of the brain, both locally and remotely, is available from an engineering perspective. So it has to be also addressed from both engineering and regulation hand in hand to make sure that no improper use and no abuse is taking place. There’s risk at the HIPAA area and there’s risk at just simply being able to penetrate and control the device and harm the person, so it’s a physical concern as well.
Mike Orlando:
Do you see the possibilities for these type of devices to be used for manipulation of thought, memory manipulation, like the movie “Inception” comes to mind or in some of these other sci-fi films where brain activity is interfered with to either extract data or to input data. Do you see those as possibilities and do you think those are realistic concerns or not?
Dr. Newton Howard:
They’re not. So there’s little concerns about being able to manipulate memories and thoughts from the regions that we’re controlling for the treatment of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, for example. But if you imagine the growth of the technology and its expansion to other regions of the brain, then there could be the possibility of doing such things.
Mike Orlando:
I want to ask a final question as we conclude. Is there any final message to the industry that you think they should hear as it continues to evolve around this area in connection with healthcare and healing innovations?
Dr. Newton Howard:
Certainly it’s an industry I think following the appropriate approach of research and appropriate solution that is out there, there’s several approaches and solutions that are in the market. It’s going to be critical to the success of that technology and success of the technology deployment. So we have to be cautious not to run to quick judgments in some of the failures, and correct them and be patient with deployment because this work is something that takes many, many years, and a product of multidisciplinary approaches and different people that have insights into it. So we have to be patient with the deployment, and eventually it will yield great benefit to humanity.
Mike Orlando:
Dr. Howard, I really want to thank you for this important conversation today. It’s one of the most interesting topics I think we’ve had on this podcast and looking forward to seeing more progress and seeing how the company evolves.
Dr. Newton Howard:
Thank you very much.
Mike Orlando:
That’s a wrap on this episode of Health-e Law, powered by Sheppard’s Digital Health and Innovation team, where health innovation meets legal expertise. Until next time, stay healthy and stay informed.
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