Breakthroughs have been made again in brain-computer interface rehabilitation technology, who will step into the first echelon of the industry?
Recently, Union Hospital Affiliated to Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology officially announced that the first domestically developed "high-channel matrix electrical stimulation-based brain-computer interface fine motor reconstruction system", co-developed by the hospital's Professor Jiang Xiaobing's brain-computer interface team and Shandong Beiming Medical Technology Co., Ltd., has completed clinical validation and implementation, helping hemiplegic patients achieve the rehabilitation effect of independent single-finger control and playing simple melodies.
This achievement marks that under the non-invasive clinical rehabilitation scenario, China's domestic brain-computer interface technology has officially broken through the bottleneck of traditional rehabilitation solutions that can only drive large muscle groups to move, extending the fine motor reconstruction capability to finger-level motion control, and providing a new industry reference sample for the commercial implementation of the entire brain-computer interface medical track.
Breakthrough in non-invasive technology, opening up the fine motor rehabilitation path
The core innovation of this newly released brain-computer interface system lies in the construction of a complete closed-loop neurorehabilitation pathway of "mind decoding - precise electrical stimulation - muscle contraction - motion execution - sensory feedback".
Different from the limitation of traditional rehabilitation electrical stimulation equipment that can only cover a few large muscle groups to realize coarse movements such as raising hands and grasping, the high-channel matrix flexible electrode equipped in this system can closely fit the skin of the human forearm, customize personalized electrical stimulation parameters according to the degree of nerve damage and muscle distribution characteristics of each patient, independently control more than ten groups of small muscle groups in the hand, and accurately complete fine movements such as single-finger flexion and extension and multi-finger coordination that were previously difficult to achieve through non-invasive methods. In the public clinical case, a 39-year-old patient with right hemiplegia and almost complete loss of right hand function successfully completed the playing of simple melodies such as *Twinkle Twinkle Little Star* after staged rehabilitation training with this system, achieving the effect that could not be achieved after one year of conventional rehabilitation training. The core logic of this technical route is to greatly improve the decoding accuracy of the brain's motor commands in a non-invasive scenario without craniotomy or implanted equipment by drawing on the mapping law of EEG signals accumulated by invasive brain-computer interface, which not only avoids the infection risk and ethical threshold brought by invasive surgery, but also breaks through the industry pain point of insufficient signal accuracy of ordinary non-invasive equipment. From the perspective of clinical value, there is a large group of patients with motor dysfunction caused by stroke, traumatic brain injury and neurological diseases in China. Under the traditional rehabilitation mode, a large number of patients cannot recover the fine motor function of their hands for a long time, which directly affects their self-care ability in daily dressing and eating. The implementation of this system just fills the technical gap in the field of non-invasive fine motor rehabilitation, and also provides a lower-threshold technical solution for the subsequent large-scale popularization of brain-computer interface in the field of neurorehabilitation.
Two-way empowerment from policies and capital
The implementation of this technological achievement is not an isolated single-point breakthrough, but an inevitable result of the multi-dimensional joint catalysis of policies, capital and technology in China's domestic brain-computer interface industry in the past two years.
Since 2025, the policy support system for China's domestic brain-computer interface industry has formed a complete closed loop from top-level planning to clinical implementation: the 15th Five-Year Plan lists brain-computer interface as one of the six future industries for forward-looking layout. The special implementation opinions jointly issued by seven departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology have clarified the two-step development path of the industry by 2030. The National Medical Products Administration also included implantable brain-computer interface medical devices in the priority review catalog of high-end medical devices at the end of 2025, greatly shortening the listing cycle of innovative products. The breakthrough on the payment side has directly opened up the "last mile" of commercialization.
In April 2025, the National Healthcare Security Administration issued the *Guiding Principles for the Establishment of Neurosystem Medical Service Price Items (Trial)*, setting up a nationally unified charging item for brain-computer interface to guide provincial pricing. Subsequently, Hubei and other places took the lead in implementing relevant charging standards, completing the first brain-computer interface surgery charged according to the new standard across the country, turning brain-computer interface treatment from a past demonstration project into a routinely available clinical service, which directly released the clinical demand at the terminal. The follow-up of the capital side further accelerates the speed of technology iteration. Since 2025, brain-computer interface has been included in the key investment areas of the national venture capital guidance fund funded by the national ultra-long-term special treasury bonds, and special guidance funds of tens of billions of yuan at various levels have been launched one after another to invest in related tracks.
In the first 9 months of 2026, there were 94 financing events in the domestic brain-computer interface field in China, with a total amount of about 85 billion yuan. The number of financings far exceeded the level of the United States in the same period. Internet giants and industrial capitals have successively laid out, and a large amount of capital has tilted to core links such as electrode materials, signal decoding algorithms, and clinical verification, providing sufficient R&D financial support for innovative achievements like the one released by Union Hospital this time.
Biotop Biotech builds brain-computer interface industrial matrix
From the perspective of industrial development stage, the current non-invasive brain-computer interface technology has taken the lead in entering the commercialization implementation period, and has begun to generate actual revenue in scenarios such as neurorehabilitation, psychiatric medical treatment, and consumer-grade health equipment; invasive and semi-invasive technologies are in the critical stage of clinical verification, and the number of clinical trial registrations of many local domestic enterprises has continued to rise, and the overall industrialization implementation progress has been in the first echelon globally.
As an enterprise that laid out the invasive brain-computer interface track relatively early in China, Biotop Biotech clearly defines brain-computer interface and brain science as its forward-looking layout direction, and through its subordinate industrial investment platform Hangzhou Botai Smart Investment, jointly establishes the "Biotop BCI Equity Investment Fund" with professional institutions to carry out equity participation, mergers and acquisitions and strategic cooperation along the upper and lower reaches of the industrial chain.
In the field of non-invasive brain-computer interface, Biotop Biotech holds shares in Haoshi Tianhui. It is introduced that Haoshi Tianhui is an innovative high-tech enterprise focusing on the field of artificial intelligence medical treatment. Its core founding team has overseas entrepreneurial background, profound industry technology accumulation and marketing expansion resources. Its self-developed medical-grade non-invasive brain-computer interface and mental health assessment equipment can accurately score and evaluate emotional problems such as depression and anxiety, and innovatively integrate intervention schemes such as music therapy to build a full-process closed-loop service of "assessment - intervention - feedback". The product can be used for emotion detection, psychological state screening, intervention effect evaluation, etc., to achieve accurate quantification of mental health indicators. It is more objective and efficient than traditional scale assessment, and is suitable for multiple scenarios such as hospitals, schools, physical examination centers, and mental health institutions.
Relying on the mature channel network of Biotop Biotech covering the inspection departments of more than a thousand public hospitals across the country, Haoshi Tianhui's brain-computer interface assessment equipment is accelerating the large-scale penetration into medical institutions at all levels across the country. At the same time, with the help of Biotop Biotech's global registration experience and overseas industrial resources, the product's overseas layout is simultaneously promoted, filling the domestic product gap in the field of rapid quantitative assessment of mental health.
It is worth mentioning that in addition to the layout in the mental health assessment track, Biotop Biotech previously strategically participated in Qingshi Yongjun through Botai Smart Investment, officially entering the invasive brain-computer interface track, and laying out the treatment scheme for refractory severe depression based on deep brain stimulation (DBS) technology; in March 2026, Biotop Biotech established the Biotop BCI Fund, further extending the investment boundary from the mental health diagnosis and treatment field to the entire brain science and brain-computer interface industrial chain, and then led the investment in Zhongke Image, an enterprise incubated by the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, through this fund, to carry out in-depth cooperation around the joint development of brain-computer interface and in vitro diagnostic reagents, registration access and clinical application promotion.