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

为该项目开发的技术使假肢和矫形器能够智能定制和制造，从而使设备具有精确和可预测的特性，以满足个人需求。从历史上看，假肢和矫形器的定制和制造过程耗时，工艺为基础，主观的性质导致设备不能充分为个人定制。本提案中探索的技术可以通过利用现代工具的优势，包括3D数字化，计算机辅助设计，有限元分析和固体自由形状制造，来创造一个客观的过程，以精确和可预测地定制，然后快速和重复地制造假肢和矫形器，从而克服这些限制。假肢和矫形器领域已经落后于其他行业，还没有接受现代技术所提供的很多东西。将这项技术更广泛地应用有可能影响假肢和矫形器领域，从以工艺为基础的工业到现代临床专业。该技术有可能使最佳定制设备在48小时内交付给患者，从而简化医疗保健交付，降低成本，并使从业人员能够花更多时间与患者在一起，并看到更多的患者，从而解决当前和日益增长的临床短缺问题。此外，这项技术可以继续改善整个医疗领域，用客观的数字过程取代主观的体力劳动，从而改善结果，节省时间和金钱。

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.