Patent ID: 7187978

Claim:
A system for establishing therapy parameters of an implantable medical device comprising in combination: (a) at least one implantable lead; (b) an external neural stimulator capable of being coupled to the implantable lead to provide stimulation energy to the lead in accordance with initial therapy parameters; (c) a programmer having a user interface to allow entry of the therapy parameters by a user, wherein the programmer is configured to provide to the external neural stimulator configuration information for a type of an implantable neural stimulator that is to be implanted; and (d) a means for providing a bi-directional communications link between the programmer and the external neural stimulator to enable the programmer to program the external neural simulator with the therapy parameters via the bi-directional communications link and to enable the external neural stimulator to provide final therapy parameter settings to the programmer, whereby the programmer may then program an implantable neural stimulator using the final therapy parameters.