I-Corps: Intelligent Customization and Manufacturing of Personalized Rehabilitation Devices

University Of Delaware, Newark DE

Investigators

Abstract

The technology developed for this project enables prosthetic and orthotic devices to be intelligently customized and manufactured, resulting in devices with characteristics that are precisely and predictably tuned to meet an individual's needs. Historically, the time-consuming, craft-based, subjective nature of the customization and manufacturing process for prosthetics and orthotics resulted in devices that were inadequately customized for the individual. The technology explored in this proposal may provide a solution to overcome these current limitations by harnessing the strengths of modern tools, including 3D digitizing, computer aided design, finite element analysis and solid freeform fabrication, to create an objective process to precisely and predictably customize and then rapidly and repeatedly manufacture prosthetics and orthotics. The field of prosthetics and orthotics has lagged behind other industries and has yet to embrace much of what modern technology has to offer. Bringing this technology into more widespread use has the potential to impact the field of prosthetics and orthotics from a craft-based industry to a modern clinical specialty. This technology has the potential to enable optimally-customized devices to be delivered to patients within 48 hours, streamlining healthcare delivery, reducing costs and enabling practitioners to spend more time with patients as well as see more patients, thereby addressing the current and growing clinical shortage. Furthermore, this technology could continue to improve of the medical field as a whole by replacing subjective, manual labor with objective, digital processes thereby improving outcomes, saving time and money.