I-Corps Teams: Aperture Prosthetic Technologies

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛影响将是通过在使用人造或假肢时提供尽可能好的配合来提高下肢截肢者的生活质量。其目标是从根本上改善医疗专业人员（被称为假肢专家）在截肢后为患者安装假肢的过程。因此，拟议的工作是一种新的评估工具，有可能帮助假肢行业的服务提供商通过提供更可靠，舒适和高质量的最终产品来增加利润。这将通过提供一种设备来实现，该设备量化残肢和假肢之间的界面（称为承窝）处的舒适度，从而改进承窝设计，使截肢者能够恢复日常活动并提高生活质量。参与I-Corps还将培养所有团队成员的创业、网络和演讲技能。该团队的参与还将改善本科生的教育，因为该团队将在当地大学纳入I-Corps课程的元素。该I-Corps项目建议继续开发一种传感器系统，能够为假肢专家提供定量的承窝适配质量信息，使他们能够提供更好的假肢。目前的舒适度和适合性评估技术主要是基于用户的反馈和临床医生？的经验。这些不太精确的技术通常被证明是无效的，由于缺乏质量配合而导致用户进一步不满。因此，开发中的舒适度传感器系统是一种嵌入式传感器阵列，能够在临床环境中测量多个舒适度指标。这些舒适度指标包括：压力分布、湿度水平、温度和假体对齐。申报器械的预期应用是在假肢和残肢之间安装一个衬垫，就像大多数截肢者使用的袜子或衬垫一样，作为界面质量指标。其用途还可用于褥疮预防和上肢和下肢截肢者的拟合。这个I-Corps项目的完成将带来客户反馈，这将有助于推动舒适传感器系统和假肢接受腔设计的新方向和未来迭代。

The broader impact of this I-Corps project will be to increase quality of life for individuals with lower limb amputations by providing the best possible fit when using an artificial, or prosthetic, limb. The goal is to fundamentally improve the process by which medical professionals, known as prosthetists, fit their patients after they undergo an amputation. Thus, the proposed work is a novel assessment tool that has the potential to assist the service providers in the prosthetic industry in increasing profits by providing a more reliable, comfortable, and high-quality end product. This will be achieved by providing a device that quantifies the comfort at the interface between the residual and artificial limb, known as the socket, and thereby improves socket designs that enable amputees to return to their daily activities and have an improved quality of life. Participation in I-Corps will also develop the entrepreneurial, networking, and presentation skills of all the team members. The team's participation will also improve education for undergraduate students, as the team will incorporate elements of the I-Corps curriculum at their local university.This I-Corps project proposes to continue developing a sensor system able to provide quantitative socket fit quality information to prosthetists, enabling them to provide a better fitting prosthetic limb. Current comfort and fit assessment techniques are predominantly based on user feedback and the clinician?s experience. These less than precise techniques can often prove ineffective, leading to further user discontent due to a lack of quality fit. The comfort sensor system in development, therefore, is an embedded sensor array able to measure multiple comfort indicators in a clinical setting. These comfort indicators include: pressure distribution, level of humidity, temperature, and prosthetic alignment. The intended application of the proposed device is a liner fitted, much like socks or liners used by most amputees, between the artificial limb and the residual limb as an interface quality indicator. Its use also has applications for bedsore prevention and fitting of upper and lower-limb amputees. Completion of this I-Corps project will result in customer feedback that will help drive new directions and future iterations of this comfort sensor system and prosthetic socket design.