Not that I don't think this is great, but this isn't anything new. My Dad works in this same line of work (FES - Functional Electrical Stimulation. Particularly in the area of spinal cord injuries). The biggest thing to note from this article: "... involves surgically implanting a stimulator and giving it directions with an external remote control. ". This is amazing tech, but it's not new by any means, it's been around for a fairly long time and it's been known you can stimulate nerves via electrical stimulation. My Dad as at least a few patients that I know of that have implants for moving their arms and hands, which they've had for at least 5 or so years now (I think one of them is 10 years old, and that was a few years ago).
Now, there is something that does seem to be a bigger breakthrough in this article, specifically the notation of having on-demand function without requiring some type of remote or etc. via a stimulator. This is new as far as I know, from the basics that I know this sounds more like helping a partial spinal cord injury rather then a full injury (My Dad works with full-spinal-cord injury patients only). I'm going to send this over to my Dad and see if he has anything to say on it.
Now, there is something that does seem to be a bigger breakthrough in this article, specifically the notation of having on-demand function without requiring some type of remote or etc. via a stimulator. This is new as far as I know, from the basics that I know this sounds more like helping a partial spinal cord injury rather then a full injury (My Dad works with full-spinal-cord injury patients only). I'm going to send this over to my Dad and see if he has anything to say on it.