Are we ready? Issues in transferring BCI technology from experts to users

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are no longer only used by healthy subjects under control conditions in laboratory environments, but by patients controlling applications at their homes, without the BCI experts around. But are the technology and the field mature enough for this? In this work, we want to summarize the experiences gained and the lessons we learned while transferring BCI technologies from the lab to the user's home. These lessons range from pure BCI issues (technical and handling), to common communication problems between different people involved, and lessons encountered while controlling the applications. The points raised are very general and will be faced similarly by other groups, if they move on to bring the BCI technology to the end-user.