Circular Economy for Prosthetic Limbs

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The number of children born with some form of upper limb deficiency is ~4.5 in every 10,000 live births; equating to 250 children per year in the UK and 3,500 children across the US and the EU. The market has failed to provide for these children. Despite advances in upper-limb prosthetics, rejection rates for paediatric users remain around 35%. This is due to a failure to address fundamental differences in patient needs between the paediatric population and adult acquired amputees. We are building the Rebel hand; a multi-functional, small, and lightweight prosthesis, that is designed with children for children. The Rebel hand can deliver ~90% of the functionality expected in high-end adult upper-limb devices in a small package, initially targeted at users aged 6-year-old and above. The fingers and the palm are modular and available in various sizes. This allows the hand to adapt to growth by proactively tracking the dimensions of the child's intact hand and fitting modules to suit.In general, medical devices are typically one-use items and they utilise increasingly high-end technology. Our modern modular design offers new opportunities for remanufacturing prosthetic hands.In this project and taking the advantage of new medical device regulation, we aim to understand how we can refurbish and recycle a used prosthesis in a safe way so that another child can use it, potentially at a much smaller price. We will explore and understand the regulatory aspects as well as public (children and their parents/carers) perception of recycling and reusing prosthetic hands. We will study various medically-approved cleansing methods in terms of cost (disinfection systems and time) and integration to modern digital manufacturing pipeline. We will develop financial models to track the costs associated with all steps of refurbishing individual subcomponents and the corresponding savings when using each refurbished component in remanufacturing. A dynamic model will drive our manufacturing process, continually optimising remanufacturing, refurbishing, and reusing to reduce cost for all stakeholders.This funding is crucial for us right now as it will enable us to1. design and manufacture the Rebel Hand in a recycling-friendly way;2. integrate data-driven financial models into our manufacturing process; and3. incentivise low-cost refurbishment within the market.