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被智能定制和制造，从而产生具有精确和可预测的调整以满足个人需求的设备的特性。从历史上看，假肢和矫形器的定制和制造过程耗时、基于工艺的主观性导致设备不能充分地为个人定制。这项提案中探讨的技术可能提供一种解决方案，通过利用现代工具的优势，包括3D数字化、计算机辅助设计、有限元分析和立体自由形式制造，来创建一个客观的过程，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。假肢和矫形术领域一直落后于其他行业，还没有接受现代技术所提供的大部分东西。将这项技术投入更广泛的应用，有可能影响假肢和矫形术领域，从以工艺为基础的行业转向现代临床专业。这项技术有可能在48小时内将最佳定制的设备交付给患者，从而简化医疗保健提供，降低成本，并使从业者能够花更多时间与患者在一起，并看更多的患者，从而解决目前和日益严重的临床短缺问题。此外，通过用客观的数字化过程取代主观的手工劳动，这项技术可以继续改善整个医疗领域，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.