Despite significant advancements in prosthetic design, many users still abandon their prostheses after minimal use. Research studies have investigated the reasons behind this abandonment, aiming to identify optimal directions for improving prosthetic design.
WordCloud of Prosthesis Design priorities
Consumer design priorities for prosthetic hands/arms indicated that weight was the highest priority design concern (Biddiss & Chau, 2007)
“Prosthetics often have poor personal and social acceptance because of limited anthropomorphism, high weight, and the presence of acoustic disturbances during use” (Marinelli et al., 2023).
“The main cause of prosthetic ineffectiveness mainly resides in a non-sufficiently patient-tailored design process” (Salminger et al., 2022b) and a lack of inclusivity (Chloe Toscano, 2022).
Structural and supporting parts lack adjustability of user size, allowing limited kinematic and motion possibilities and more advanced systems present limited operational time. This leads to limited satisfaction and a feeling of security(Harte et al., 2017).
Some of the challenges that are not fully addressed today are the lack of custom sizes of hands, limited coloring to match skin color (Chloe Toscano, 2022), the difficulty of interfacing and changing actuation modes quickly and seamlessly, performing two-hand actions.
Prosthetics are currently very expensive ($8K-$100K for upper arm/hand devices) (Wayne Williams, 2020).
We are currently developing some novel upper extremity prostheses. If you or someone you know is interested in helping guide the design process and have opinions about what features and aspects of the technology are the most important to amputees then please reach out. Thanks!
References:
Biddiss, E., & Chau, T. (2007). Upper limb prosthesis use and abandonment: A survey of the last 25 years. In Prosthetics and Orthotics International (Vol. 31, Issue 3, pp. 236–257). https://doi.org/10.1080/03093640600994581
Marinelli, A., Boccardo, N., Tessari, F., Di Domenico, D., Caserta, G., Canepa, M., Gini, G., Barresi, G., Laffranchi, M., De Michieli, L., & Semprini, M. (2023). Active upper limb prostheses: a review on current state and upcoming breakthroughs. Progress in Biomedical Engineering, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.1088/2516-1091/acac57
Chloe Toscano. (2022, September 5). Prosthetics are built for disabled people but still lack inclusivity. Https://Www.Nbcnews.Com/Think/Opinion/Prosthetics-Are-Built-for-Disabled-People-but-Still-Lack-Inclusivity-Rcna45727.
Harte, R., Glynn, L., Rodríguez-Molinero, A., Baker, P. M. A., Scharf, T., Quinlan, L. R., & ÓLaighin, G. (2017). A Human-centered design methodology to enhance the usability, human factors, and user experience of connected health systems: A three-phase methodology. JMIR Human Factors, 4(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.2196/humanfactors.5443