The invention of the bionic foot

[Zor]

Link



And technology moves forward in helping out the disabled.

Zor

[mr friendly guy]

For some reason the link doesn't work for me. Care to post the article on the board?

On a humourous note, when can we get the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman? Actually I would just settle for the latter because Jamie Sommers as played by Lindsay Wagner was stunning.

[Rabid]

For some reason the link doesn't work for me. Care to post the article on the board?

iWalk Has Created The First Truly Bionic Foot

“In hindsight, losing my foot was one of the better things that happened to me. It turned out to provide me with a weird, hidden opportunity.”

That’s how prostheticist Shawn Brown introduced me to his work. Brown, who works at the Indiana-based SRT Prosthetics and Orthotics, lost his left foot in an industrial accident in 1992. He went on to participate as an athlete in the 1996 and 2000 Paralympic Games. He’s spent the last 20 years in the prosthetics field now, and he told me about his new prosthetic, the BiOM from iWalk, which he not only helps his patients with, but uses himself.

“Within minutes of putting BiOM on and walking down the sidewalk, my mind very quickly connected to being propelled forward. Every prosthetic I’ve used to this point has absorbed energy and didn’t give much back to me,” he said.

This key difference is why iWalk President and CEO Tim McCarthy described the BiOM to me as a truly “bionic” prosthetic, because it emulates human function.

“In order to understand what’s unique, you have to understand the tech that’s been broadly used for the past 25 years. If you were to suffer an amputation and fit with ‘yesterday’s tech’ the sensation you’d feel when walking is that the prosthetic is stepping in sand, while the good leg is stepping on pavement. The existing systems are grossly inefficient, which creates a gait asymmetry because users have to accommodate energy deficiency. This results in a lot of different health problems, such as weight gain and diabetes.”

He continued. “What BiOM does is replicate the action of foot and ankle, Achilles tendon, and lower calf. By emulating the bone and soft tissues, it can provide exactly the right amount of energy needed, which makes it as efficient as people with intact limbs. People have told me that it feels like they have their ankle back.”

The BiOM is the brainchild of Dr. Hugh Herr at MIT’s Media Lab. Herr is a double amputee himself, and has devoted his professional life to improving prosthetics. The BiOM was developed at MIT and licensed to iWalk in 2007. With grants from the Veteran’s Administration and the Department of Defense, iWalk was able to develop a proof of concept BiOM at the end of 2010. Commercial production began in 2011 and the BiOM is now in its second year of production.

The response from users has been overwhelmingly positive. According to Brown, he’s only had one patient return the BiOM. But that wasn’t because that patient didn’t like the BiOM – it’s because, as he told Brown, he wasn’t very active, liked his couch, and didn’t want to underutilize a prosthetic that could go to someone else, instead. As for his other patients, “they’ve told me that I can pry their BiOMs from their cold, dead hands.”

With this initial success, McCarthy says that in addition to developing the BiOM technology for other limbs, such as knee replacements, they will also be focusing aggressively on distribution and sales. One challenge for the company is that although the BiOM is competitively priced compared to other prosthetics that include similar technology, it’s more expensive than more traditional prosthetics. In the long run, though, McCarthy is convinced that the BiOM will dramatically reduce health care costs for amputees, because they’ll avoid some of the weight gain and other long-term health issues.

“There’s really no comparison to our technology,” McCarthy told me. “We’re redefining what it means to be bionic by truly emulating human function. When people put on the BiOM, they walk out the door as though they never lost their leg.”

[Irbis]

iWalk? Is it powered by Firewire port only?

On more serious note, seeing how Apple legal department fights things named iAnything, even registered long before iAbc became a thing, I was surprised they actually can use this name.

[amigocabal]

For some reason the link doesn't work for me. Care to post the article on the board?

On a humourous note, when can we get the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman? Actually I would just settle for the latter because Jamie Sommers as played by Lindsay Wagner was stunning.

With wounded veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, there would be public pressure to restore them, even if it costs more money in the long run than simply giving them a lifetime of disability benefits.

Until then, the Six Million Dollar man is fiction, while the Million Dollar Baby is all too real.

[Broomstick]

With wounded veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, there would be public pressure to restore them, even if it costs more money in the long run than simply giving them a lifetime of disability benefits.

Have you considered that there are benefits beyond appeasing public pressure to restoring people to as full function as possible rather than putting them on lifetime disability?

[Serafina]

With wounded veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, there would be public pressure to restore them, even if it costs more money in the long run than simply giving them a lifetime of disability benefits.

Have you considered that there are benefits beyond appeasing public pressure to restoring people to as full function as possible rather than putting them on lifetime disability?

Not to mention that you simply can't compare cost of restorative treatment with disability benefits - you also have to consider that you'll raise productivity of the now no-longer disabled people, therefore improving your economy.
And that's just the cold, economic aspect, Broomstick just mentioned the human benefits.

[amigocabal]

Have you considered that there are benefits beyond appeasing public pressure to restoring people to as full function as possible rather than putting them on lifetime disability?

Of course.

The public pressure certainly helps in getting things done, though.