Wireless by Design: How Resonant Link Is Powering the Next Wave of Bioelectronics
As bioelectronic devices become smaller, smarter, and more integrated with AI, one problem has remained unsolved: Power. From brain-computer interfaces to cardiac devices, battery limitations and heat management continue to stall innovation in the sector.
Resonant Link Medical is trying to change that. Their high-efficiency wireless power and data transfer system is designed to support next-generation implantables with safety and reliability at the forefront. At its core is a scalable design system that allows partners to simulate device design trade-offs and move quickly to shrink devices and prioritize patient comfort.
In an exclusive interview, Omari Bouknight, CEO of Resonant Link Medical, shares his passion for the sector, how his team is working to set a new standard in power and connectivity, and why ecosystem partnerships will define the future of neurotech.
By Carter Sciences
Omari Bouknight, CEO of Resonant Link Medical.
What was your journey into medical devices, and what led you to become CEO of Resonant Link Medical?
Absolutely. I’m from Michigan in the Midwest of the United States, and I grew up in a home with two physicians. Both of my parents are doctors — my dad’s an MD-PhD, so conversations around patient care, science, and technology were pretty common in the household. I knew fairly early on that the direct medical route wasn’t the path for me, but I really liked technology, devices, and things you can touch and see operate. I also had an early interest in business and healthcare — and the intersection of those three elements is definitely in the medical device sector.
I started my device career in cardiac rhythm management, working on stimulation devices for bradycardia (slow heart rate) and tachycardia (fast heart rate). We later found we could also treat heart failure with cardiac resynchronization therapy (a treatment for heart failure that uses a pacemaker to help the heart’s chambers pump in a coordinated way, improving blood flow). It fascinated me that using stimulation parameters in a targeted way could help address major health conditions. This was back in the very early 2000s, which was when cardiac resynchronization therapy and implantable cardiac defibrillators were really gaining traction. From there, I worked across different companies, from early-stage start-ups to more established players, developing a range of technologies — left ventricular assist devices (LVAD), mitral repair systems, and atrial fibrillation ablation devices.
More recently, I became really interested in the neuro space and broader bioelectronics field. There’s a wave of innovation happening, and I’m really a device geek at heart. I wanted to work on a platform that could support these new technologies — smaller, smarter, more precise implants. The key commonality across all of them? They require energy — and getting energy into the body without wires is a classic challenge. That’s where my work with Resonant Link Medical really comes into view, leading a team that’s developed strong intellectual property, know-how, and expertise around building high-performing wireless power and data transfer systems for devices placed more focally throughout the body.
In simple terms, what’s the unique leap Resonant Link Medical’s wireless platform makes compared to traditional bioelectronic devices?
I’d say the origin story really goes back to 2017. There was some base technology that was identified and developed — coming out of Dartmouth and Stanford — which introduced a new way of driving power transfer wirelessly. Those insights and innovations focused on improving the efficiency of power transfer, and that efficiency also brings another benefit: It controls the temperature and heating of the device and therefore, importantly, the patient’s body.
As you can imagine, if you have an implantable device that’s coupled with an external power source and it generates a lot of heat, the last thing you want to worry about is skin abrasions or heating. This technology is really elegant because it’s hyper-efficient, and that efficiency allows you to push more power more deeply, meaning you can recharge batteries faster or power the device directly while also maintaining better temperature control. That reduces patient risk and discomfort.
We’ve also developed advanced ways of passing data through telemetry into an implanted device, which is key for maintaining a consistent connection inside and outside of the body, as well as shielding techniques to protect against external sources of radiation and electromagnetic interference. We’ve created a full platform — called Aurion™ WPT — that we customize based on what our partners need, and have developed three different product platforms (miniaturized wireless power platform Eterni™, wireless universal charger Vivigo™, and wireless high-power platform Cardessa™) that are essentially reference designs and white-label systems tailored to specific applications, such as brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), neurostimulators, or cardiac devices like an LVAD. Our aim is to accelerate our partners’ time to market, reduce risk, and ultimately preserve capital for clinical trials — which are critical given how complex and resource-intensive medical device development has become.
Miniaturized wireless power platform Eterni™ powers milimetre-scale implants.
Which therapeutic areas are you prioritizing first, and why do you feel they represent the best starting point for Resonant Link Medical’s wireless platform?
So, the really neat thing — and what I found fascinating about this technology — is that it’s highly scalable. I’m used to seeing systems like this work great either for high-power applications, like an LVAD, or for very low-power applications, like those placed in the cranial domain. But our platform is extremely scalable, which means we’re able to move both upstream and downstream in terms of power applications.
The area where we’re seeing the most interest is definitely in bioelectronics. The trend there is devices becoming more focal, more compact, and increasingly driven by AI-based systems — all aiming to be smarter in their approach. That’s a space where we really excel. That includes BCIs — we’re very active in BCI, both neuromodulation and neurostimulation as well — but we’re also seeing interest on the cardiac side, particularly in sensor-based applications and pacing. There’s growing engagement around activity-based and adaptive pacing, too.
And then there are applications I’d categorize more as quality-of-life focused, though they still have strong health implications. Sleep apnea is one; urology and incontinence are others. We’re seeing some really compelling use cases emerge in those domains. Finally, at the high-power end of the spectrum, when you’re talking about devices like LVADs or total artificial hearts, there’s huge potential. So we’re seeing a lot of interest there too.
Are you collaborating with others in the power, energy, and — more broadly — implantable technology spaces?
I would say that for us — because our expertise really is around wireless power and data transfer — it’s important that we do have some partnerships within the ecosystem. And there are generally two types of partnerships that we operate with. The first is around how you actually store the energy. While there are active implants that are being directly powered — which I think is a very interesting opportunity, and we do work on that — most of the technologies we work on store energy in a battery. We’re not a battery manufacturer, so we have partnerships in place with companies that specialize in developing and designing rechargeable batteries.
The second partnership focus for us is really on the manufacturing side. Our expertise is in the design, development, and integration of the technology we’ve come up with, but we don’t do high-scale manufacturing. So we’ve built some manufacturer partnerships too in case that’s a direction one of our clients wants to go in with us. I’d say about half the time, that’s the path they want to take. The other half, they want to do the manufacturing themselves.
The nice thing about the way we approach client engagements is that we’re agnostic to which direction they choose. It’s the same with stored energy — a lot of our clients have Implantable Pulse Generators (IPGs) they’ve already developed, or a battery manufacturer of record, so we like to be able to really work with anyone. What we’re doing is solving the wireless power and data transfer needs — which is an extremely complex field, by the way — and as these devices continue to get smaller and smarter, they require a lot of sophistication to make everything work together.
Wireless universal charger Vivigo™ delivers 20-minute recharging for implanted devices.
Beyond the technology, what are the biggest hurdles to adoption, such as reimbursement, patient trust, or clinician workflow, and how are you approaching them?
I think one of the most fascinating aspects of working in medical devices is how many stakeholders participate. Implantable medical devices in particular might be one of the only domains where, if you ask someone, “How does it feel to engage with the customer?” — you actually have to stop and ask yourself, “Well, who is the customer?”
Obviously, from one perspective, the end users — the patient and their caregivers — are customers, but they’re often not the one making the purchase decision. Often that decision can fall to the implanting physician, but it can also involve stakeholders within the hospital itself. Frequently, even the referring physician who first saw the patient might have a voice in that decision. So, in terms of adoption, one of the challenges is that you must consider all of those stakeholders. One of the benefits of the technologies we’re supporting and enabling is that they’re very much focused on how to benefit the patient and what it’s like to live with the device as a patient — and those benefits are definitely there.
But we also need to make sure there’s physician buy-in from an implanting perspective; that these are real, tangible benefits for the patient — that’s what makes physicians want to adopt. The same goes for institutions, hospitals, and even the referring physicians. And that’s a lot of stakeholders to drive buy-in from. And as an enabling technology, we’re even one step further removed from the final product and package. So what we find is that the companies who are really focused on usability and on the patient’s in-body experience love partnering with us — because of all of the patient-facing benefits that we can enable, including some of the best patient experiences out there. Similarly, we aim to enable some of the best clinician experiences, given their desire for smaller, more reliable devices and less invasive procedures.
But it does take time for those adoption characteristics to unfold, simply because so many different people have a voice in bringing new technologies to market. So, it is a process — and I think that’s one of the reasons why, when you look across the various categories of implantables, you see a wide range in the percentage of specific devices that are rechargeable, and even within that, the proportion that are leveraging patient-friendly recharging.
Within your partnerships, how involved are you in the design process? Is it more of a hands-on collaboration, or do partners come to you with specifications and treat the engagement more as an advisory relationship?
No, they’re true partnerships. Over the next four or five days, there will probably be seven different partners we’re working with, and I’ll be there physically with them — following up, talking things through — because when you’re embedding this technology into a system, it really needs to be a true partnership in pretty much every sense of the word. It’s not something we can just throw over the wall and have them run with. There are trade-offs in the design process. I think one of the neat things about being a design engineer is figuring out what the prioritization stack is — sort of the Pareto effect — like, what trade-offs do you want to make? That’s often part of the conversation: How deep in the body do you want to place the device? How small do you want it to be? How much energy do you want it to receive? You can’t have it all, and these questions all represent different trade-offs that must be made to optimize how the device performs.
In addition to the technology, one of the things I find most impactful and helpful for our partners is that we have very sophisticated simulation tools. So, we can explore those trade-offs in a matter of hours and essentially just spit out the correct answer. And it’s not just performance trade-offs either — we optimize for supply chain considerations, cost, and manufacturability too. Working in partnership is how we optimize the package of our clients’ devices and how they perform, and being able to leverage those simulation tools is a big part of how we do that together.
Wireless high-power platform Cardessa™ supports quality of life for patients living with high power implantables.
What’s your dream scenario for the impact of Resonant Link Medical’s technology on medicine and patients’ lives?
We have an internal goal to become the de facto standard in wireless power and data transfer for active implantables, and by doing that, help lift the entire field by accelerating innovation and reducing costs as companies bring new technologies to market. Our vision is that by 2030, our technology will be embedded in solutions that are supporting and helping over 500,000 patients worldwide.
Finally, zooming out and looking at the neurotech industry as a whole — from implantables to consumer-centric wearables — where do you see the industry heading? What does the future of neurotechnology look like to you?
I think one aspect of this conversation that we don’t talk about as much as we should is the prediction of disease and conditions before they take root. I believe we’ll see more predictive analytics in medicine that can say, “Here’s the path you’re on, and based on that projection, you’re likely to end up in a certain state”. And based on this, we’ll be able to intervene earlier to improve outcomes. One of the common truths in medicine is that early intervention, especially when guided by prediction, leads to better outcomes. We certainly see this in heart failure — the morbidity, mortality, and costs to the healthcare system increase significantly as you progress from class one to class four heart failure. If we have tools that are predictive and allow for earlier intervention, we’ll get better outcomes. I also think we’re going to see a strong connection between predictive medicine and precision medicine, and that combination will drive much better outcomes across the board.
The other trend I see is related to how patients perceive value. When you look at the data, patients generally evaluate quality of life at the same level — or even higher — than quantity of life. If you offer a patient two pills — one in your right hand that extends life by two years but with very poor quality of life, and one in your left that restores quality of life to their best days but only extends life by one year — many patients would choose the pill in the left hand. So, I think we’ll see more technologies focused on improving quality of life, not just extending it.
Also published on Medium via NeuroTechX
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