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.
Our NSF I-Corps team award aimed to investigate the commercial viability of a technology that 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 process to customize and manufacture prosthetics and orthotics resulted in devices that were inadequately customized for the individual. The technology explored under this award 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. Over an eight week guided course and then in the months to follow, our team conducted extensive customer discovery interviews to explore the commercial feasibility of transitioning the laboratory technology into clinical practice. Our team quickly learned that key value propositions that resonated in the scientific community were not equally received by those in the clinical community. Our initial product did not have an available market resulting in non-viable opportunity. As we continued to further explore the commercial landscape, however, we started to identify a customer archetype that had palpable pain points that our technology might be able to alleviate. From that, we began forming a business model based on our target customer segment that aims to meet these customers’ principal value propositions. We further explored how we would manufacture and distribute our product and who our key partners and sales channels would be. These hypotheses allowed us to estimate revenue streams and assess commercial feasibility. We found that there was still significant development that would need to happen before our technology was ready to be deployed in the clinic. However, this work helped us to identify the key steps necessary to further transition this technology as well as who are our key partners and relationships necessary fully realize commercialization.
