A Vancouver Cop Just Made Medical History. His Thoughts Can Now Control His iPhone.

A Vancouver Police sergeant just became the first Canadian living with ALS to receive a Neuralink brain implant from Elon Musk’s company.

Sgt. Lee Marten put in 18 years with the VPD and 14 years before that in the Canadian Armed Forces. He was diagnosed with ALS last year, and now he’s made history with a surgery that pulled together a 25-person team of doctors, engineers and clinical specialists from Canada and the US.

Surgeons used Neuralink’s robotic system to thread hair-thin, flexible electrode arrays into the motor cortex of Marten’s brain. The implant, called Telepathy and about the size of a coin, reads his neural signals and sends them wirelessly to an app that uses machine learning to turn his thoughts into actions on a screen, via Bluetooth (and charges wirelessly). Once it’s fully dialed in, Marten will be able to control his MacBook and iPhone just by thinking, moving a cursor, typing out messages and opening apps without lifting a finger.

Vancouver Police Chief Constable Steve Rai praised Marten’s courage after the milestone, saying, “Inspired by the strength and determination of #VPD Sergeant Lee Marten. Following his ALS diagnosis last year, Lee is the first Canadian to receive a Neuralink telepathy chip implant — technology that could allow him to control a phone or laptop using only his thoughts.”

Canada’s Neuralink trial keeps expanding

Canada was the first country outside the US approved to host Neuralink’s human clinical trials. Health Canada signed off on the CAN-PRIME Study (Canadian Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface) in late 2024, naming the University Health Network in Toronto as the country’s only site for it.

The first Canadians to get the implant were two patients with cervical spinal cord injuries, operated on in August and September of 2025 at Toronto Western Hospital by neurosurgeon Dr. Andres Lozano. Both were controlling a digital cursor within minutes of waking up.

Marten’s surgery extends that same trial to ALS for the first time in Canada, testing whether the implant can help preserve communication and quality of life as the disease takes away movement.