Fun conversation with Michael Peirone and Kelly Knight from Victoria Hand Project with technical demos and economic discussion on how 3D printed prosthetics can change the lives of upper Limb amputees and the world we live in. VHP has helped over 200 amputees worldwide and this year, they aim to help more North American patients.

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Michael Peirone graduated from the University of Victoria in 2016 with a B.Eng in Biomedical Engineering. During his undergraduate degree, Michael completed two internships with Victoria Hand Project (VHP) and volunteered with VHP during his in-class semesters. Upon graduating, he began working with VHP full-time as a mechanical designer. Now as Chief Operating Officer, Michael runs the day-to-day operations of the Victoria Hand Project. This includes working with the teams in the partner countries, overseeing design updates on the scoliosis braces and prosthetic arms, and fundraising.

Kelly Knights is a fourth-year biomedical engineering student at the University of Victoria who has been volunteering with the Victoria Hand Project since September 2016. Kelly completed a co-op work term with the Victoria Hand project in Fall 2018, where she assisted with the design, development, and testing of the new Force Doubler device and the Child’s Hand. Kelly has also been involved with media outreach, the creation of training documentation, and the assembly of the Victoria Hand.

Relevant links:

Victoria Hand Project
IG Live recording
https://3dheals.com/improving-the-world-with-3d-printing
https://3dheals.com/3d-printing-low-cost-prosthetic-and-orthotic-devices

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In many developing countries, amputees do not have access to a usable prosthetic device. Often times, there is a major lack of resources and conventional prosthetics are too expensive for amputees to afford. The Victoria Hand Project (VHP) makes low-cost, 3D printed prosthetic devices and works with local communities to get proper prosthetic care to the people that need it.

Amputees may want a prosthetic device for many different reasons. For some people, missing limbs can lead to low self-esteem and social exclusion from the community. For others, it can make it difficult to find and maintain meaningful employment. For all, it can make eating, cooking, dressing, and washing challenging to complete. By providing amputees with a usable prosthetic device, confidence is increased, employment can be found and everyday tasks can be carried out without assistance. 

The Victoria Hand is a complete body-powered prosthesis consisting of a hand, a wrist, a limb-socket, and a harness and costs only $240 USD to print, assemble and fit. As a comparison, conventional prosthetic devices can cost thousands of dollars. The Victoria Hand has high functionality, natural appearance, and is custom-made to fit each amputee. 

VHP’s approach has three key features: 

(1) setup of a production/fabrication center and training to make 3D printed prostheses on-site within developing countries; 

(2) training and working with clinical intermediaries and medical practitioners to provide professional care for amputees; 

(3) on-going operations support for both the 3D Print Group and the Clinical Care Group. 

Not only are amputees able to get replacement parts easily and on-demand, but the local economy is supported by creating jobs for people living in the country. 

All of this is made possible with 3D-printing technology! The Victoria Hand Project first began as a Master’s project in 2001 by the Executive Director of the project, Dr. Nikolai Dechev, while at the University of Toronto. Dr. Dechev wanted to create a hand capable of adaptive grasp so amputees could have a device that had a more mechanical function, could grip onto objects better and looked more natural. The hand was ground-breaking but, as it was originally machined from metal, cost thousands of dollars to manufacture. It wasn’t until 3D printing became readily available that the hand was looked at again. 3D printing paved the way for the success of the project, with parts manufactured at a fraction of the original price. 

Grand Challenges Canada provided a grant in September 2014 to further the research and, in February 2015, the first trials in Guatemala began, with patients testing the 3D-printed Victoria Hand for up to eight weeks. The users not only gave insightful feedback but also loved the hand, asking to keep it after testing was done. This sparked the idea for the Victoria Hand Project—a non-profit organization that could develop a high-quality, low-price prosthesis for the developing world. Established officially in July 2015, VHP has since partnered in seven different countries around the world and fit over 100 amputees with trans-radial (below elbow) and trans-humeral (above the elbow) upper-limb prosthetic devices.

The Victoria Hand is currently available in seven countries worldwide

A woman in Cambodia uses the Victoria Hand to wash dishes

Kevin from Guatemala holding a 3D printed ball with his 3D printed prosthetic hand

With feedback from the in-country partner groups, prosthetists and amputees, VHP works to make the device even better and more user-friendly. VHP’s mission is to provide upper-limb prosthetics to amputees in need, and hope the future brings chances to help many more amputees across the world!

See some of the newest innovations, including a Child’s Hand and a Force Doubler, at VictoriaHandProject.com

About the Author

Kelly Knights is a fourth-year biomedical engineering student at the University of Victoria who has been volunteering with the Victoria Hand Project since September 2016. Kelly completed a co-op work term with the Victoria Hand project in Fall 2018, where she assisted with the design, development, and testing of the new Force Doubler device and the Child’s Hand. Kelly has also been involved with media outreach, the creation of training documentation and assembly of the Victoria Hand. 

The post A Helping Hand to Those in Need—Improving the World with 3D Printing appeared first on 3DHeals.

“My vision for Voices of Africa is to use the charity as a vehicle for starting sustainable technology projects that help youth and women to have better standards of living. Our plan for 2017 is to start the first technical hub specifically geared towards making for medical applications in Africa. I also hope we can continue and expand our educational offerings and support the causes we care about.”

Crystal Kigoni is a development consultant professional, who worked with a large variety of organizations focusing on project management, communications, and the utilization of technology. With more than sixteen years of consulting experience, including nine years in East Africa , she had developed a varied and useful set of skills for the most challenging of environments and assignments. Crystal Kigoni will be a speaker for #3DHEALS2017 .

Q: What is your vision on the intersection of 3D Printing and healthcare?

A: 3D printing has the ability to make once impossible dreams in healthcare come to life. As this technology grows and progresses it will find more and more applications and use cases. The use cases for its potential in Africa are endless.

Q: What do you specialize in? What is your passion?

A: I specialize in 3D printed medical tools for the five most pressing preventable healthcare challenges in Africa: lack of breathing at birth, infections, malaria, premature birth, HIV/AIDS. I am passionate about finding ways to save lives and empowering people to take control of their lives and health using technology.

Q: What inspired you to do what you do?

A: I was inspired to start researching how to 3D print medical tools in Sub Saharan Africa after doing research projects on the problem in the availability of supplies on the village level from actually working on the villages in rural Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. The inspiration grew from an inkling to an obsession when I myself had to go to a rural hospital and have 2 operations for which the hospital was lacking basic tools and drugs. It was a teaching hospital and the nursing students lacked any kind of medical models. I came to understand that

Q: What is the biggest potential impact you see 3D printing having on the healthcare industry?

A: In Africa, 3D printing technology can completely change the supply chain and how supplies are managed on a local level. It reduces logistical expenses and the cost of importation. Other than the fiscal costs of importation, the current supply chain costs in terms of local industrial employment, local skills development, and many children die while waiting for supplies to be delivered. It has been estimated that more than 3 million children lose their lives internationally due to simple preventable medical problems and the lack of equipment and supplies to save lives.

Copyright VoicesofAfrica

Q: What challenges do you see arising in implementing 3D printing in healthcare sector in the next 5 years? Esp in Africa?

A: The challenges of implementing 3D printing in health in Africa are immense. There are issues with how to source the printers and get them into the country. We are working towards local manufacture, but then if the printers are in rural areas how do we provide support and services. So very few people know about 3D printing, and it is almost as if we are starting right now in building a brand new ecosystem that didn’t exist even 2 years ago. The lack of knowledge of 3D printing and the lack of skills applicable to its application are our greatest challenges. AS with any technology project in Tanzania, we still battle regularly with power outages and other inconveniences from poor infrastructure that delay our work. Legally, the policy environment needs to grow to include the potentially individualized locally made products while still protecting consumers. That legislation has not yet been written or passed anywhere in Africa.

Q: What is the best business lesson you have learned?

A: The best business lesson I think I have learned is that not everyone will be ready to support a disruptive new idea at first. There is much more to the diffusion of a technology than just sales. Building a brand new market in a blue ocean of chance is a beautiful opportunity and a real challenge all the same.

Q: What is the biggest business risk you have taken?

A: The biggest risk I have taken for my work was moving to East Africa. I still feel like I am taking risks for my work daily.

Q: What were the biggest challenges you had to overcome on your innovative journey?

A: The biggest challenges I have had to overcome are ignorance, prejudice, and stereotypes. We are still overcoming these issues so I continue to work towards lessening them for myself and others to come.

Copyright VoicesofAfrica

Q: What is your vision for Voices of Africa?

A: My vision for Voices of Africa is to use the charity as a vehicle for starting sustainable technology projects that help youth and women to have better standards of living. Our plan for 2017 is to start the first technical hub specifically geared towards making for medical applications in Africa. I also hope we can continue and expand our educational offerings and support the causes we care about.

The post Interview: Ms. Crystal Watley Kigoni appeared first on 3DHeals.

“Recognize that innovation often emerges on the fringes, and at the threshold, of established professions. Students are on the threshold. It is their opportunity and responsibility to recognize that they are well positioned to be pioneers, and advocates for change, as well as repositories of established professional wisdom.”

Jon Schull is the Founder of e-NABLE, a global network of volunteers using 3D technologies to make free 3D printed prosthetics for children and undeserved populations. A social and business entrepreneur, inventor, human-computer interaction researcher, and digital community organizer, Schull also co-founded the Enable Community Foundation and pioneering digital rights company SoftLock.com, aka DigitalGoods.com (NASDAQ:DIGS).

Schull is the author of 19 patents, most of them informed by his theoretical work in complex adaptive systems and his Ph.D. in Biological Psychology from University of Pennsylvania. Schull and his collaborators pioneer solutions for “Connected Humanitarians” and their beneficiary-partners around the world. Dr. Schull will be a speaker at our global conference in April, #3DHEALS2017.

Q: What is your vision on the intersection of 3D Printing and healthcare?

A: 3D printing is a fabrication technique, a methodology, and a harbinger of things to come. These three aspects of 3D printing all have potentially profound implications for healthcare. As a fabrication technique, 3D printing and design accelerate and enables the development and production of useful healthcare devices. As a methodology, it is ushering an era of rapid prototyping, mass customization, and digital distribution.

Because digital technologies inevitably tend to spread beyond the traditional geographical and organizational bounds of institutional and professional medicine, 3D printing presages a future, where patients and “connected humanitarians” around the world have access to tools of production, and to medical data which was formerly available to, and controlled by professionals. An example would be prosthetic devices by non-professional volunteers.

If we take the long view, “non-institutional healthcare” has been the norm throughout most of human history. Looking forward, open source 3D printed assistive technologies (and other internet-enabled healthcare techniques) allows us to envision a new era of non-institutional healthcare that may complement, inform, and ultimately transform traditional, professional institutional healthcare.

Q: What do you specialize in? What is your passion?

A: Change making and inventing, studying and advancing the spread of valuable ideas through information networks. When I got my Ph.D. biological psychology (37 years ago!), I was interested in natural selection as a biological problem-solving in the information networks known as gene pools and ecosystems, and as a model for problem-solving by communities as well as individuals. When the world wide web emerged as an accessible global information network, I started a company and invented a system for distributing digital goods like software and e-books through the internet. in my second academic career I taught innovation and invention, and that lead to the creation of e-NABLE, which (surprise!) is all about change making by inventing and disseminating assistive technologies through the internet.

Q: What inspired you to do what you do?

A: I saw a youtube video about the first source 3D-printable “robohand” and had the bright idea of adding a comment inviting people with 3D printers and people who needed prosthetics to put pins on an online map. I described “e-NABLE” as “a [mythical] global assistive technology network built on an infrastructure of 3D printing, electronic communications, and good will.” Implausibly, it took off, and the possibility that this might actually work took over my life!

Q: What challenges do you see arising in implementing 3D printing in healthcare sector in the next 5 years?

A: The biggest challenge will be finding the right mix of regulation and bureaucracy, vs. creative, chaotic innovation. Regulations that ensure we “do no harm” are good. Bureaucracies and traditions that prevent doing good are harmful. As a result, undeserved populations suffer, and human resources are wasted.

Q: What is the best business lesson you have learned?

A: Nothing goes as planned.

Q: What is the biggest business risk you have taken?

A: I’m the only person I know who’s given up tenure twice. Both times it worked out, even though the ventures I plunged into (the digital rights management business, and e-NABLE) have been roller coaster rides.

Q: What were the biggest challenges you had to overcome on your innovative journey?

A: If your most innovative ideas were obvious to other people, they wouldn’t be innovations. So you have to endure skepticism and discouragement. If the path forward is obvious to others, others can take it. So you have to slog. And yet, you are often wrong. So you have to accept failure, endure disappointment, and recognize that success is not assured.

Q: What is your vision for open source community like eNABLE? (You can change the questions to make it more correct)?

A: e-NABLE as a model of connected humanitarianism: volunteers using open source methodologies and emerging technologies to develop and disseminate new solutions for undeserved populations. This is not charity — it’s incredibly rewarding work. The opportunity — and the luxury — of creating a world worthy of our better selves should be universal.

Q: Who has had the greatest influence on your career?

A: I’ve had a varied career…but in my current field, I’d say humanitarians and change makers like Mohammad Younis and Gandhi, inventors like Dean Kamen, and digital communitarians like Richard Stallman (open source) and Johnny Wales (Wikipedia).

Q: What was the defining moment that led you to your field?

A: That would be the moment when I commented on a youtube video about the first source 3D-printable “robohand” inviting people with 3D printers and people who needed prosthetics to put pins on an online map describing “e-NABLE” as “a [mythical] global assistive technology network built on an infrastructure of 3D printing, electronic communications, and good will.” Implausibly enough, it took off.

Q: What area of research most interests you right now? Why?

A: Under what conditions are radically inexpensive devices possible, valuable, and appropriate? To answer this question, we need to explore the realm of the possible further, develop our understanding of both functional and psycho-social value, and develop a richer knowledge of the medical and social-economic contexts in which such devices are medically or socially appropriate.

Q: What advice would you offer to students today?

A: Recognize that innovation often emerges on the fringes, and at the threshold, of established professions. Students are on the threshold. It is their opportunity and responsibility to recognize that they are well positioned to be pioneers, and advocates for change, as well as repositories of established professional wisdom.

Q: Have you ever been fortunate enough to witness or to have been part of medical history in the making? If so, please explain.

A: The emergence of a global network of volunteers developing and delivering radically inexpensive assistive technologies to undeserved populations may prove to be a significant chapter in medical history (within the field of prosthetics or beyond). Or not. Time — and future work — will tell.

Q: What is up next for you?

A: I’m working on the research questions described above, and I’m trying to develop alliances of e-NABLE and other “connected humanitarian” movements with medical and humanitarians organizations around the world that can reach, serve, and protect the interests of underserved populations. (Look for news about e-NABLEghva.)

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