i-limb

Touch Bionics has upgraded its bionic i-Limb Hand with a model that features controllable grip strength, miniaturized components, and rugged aluminum construction that can bear loads up to about 200 pounds.

To be unveiled next week at Orthopaedie + Reha-Technik 2010 in Leipzig, Germany, the i-Limb Pulse uses high-frequency electronic pulses to drive each digit motor to gradually tighten its grip on objects such as shoelaces or belts. This gives users better control over intricate grasping motions.

Users can control preset digit and grip postures, for instance a pointing index finger, with Bluetooth-enabled software called MyBioSim, which can also be used … Read more

As Eric Jones fought off cancer a few years ago, his weakened immune system left him vulnerable to strep pneumonia and sepsis, which developed into the blood-clotting disorder known as Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation.

Without enough blood supply to his extremities, he wasn't expected to come out of a month-long, medical-induced coma and be able to keep his arms and feet.

Jones was fortunate to fare better than expected, but he did lose movement in his left hand, his right hand's fingers and thumb, his toes, and parts of his feet. Even with intensive physical therapy and the aid of crutches, his mobility was severely affected, and he was unable to do such previously simple tasks as walk while holding a coffee mug, play Legos with his kids, or perform on the piano.

Enter ProDigits, believed to be the world's first powered bionic finger solution, whose commercial launch developer Touch Bionics announced Tuesday. With a silicone skin designed specifically to fit around his right hand, the ProDigits prosthesis gave Jones, who began to use the latest model this summer, a movable thumb.

In other words, it gave him opposition, without which the hand is considered to be 40 percent impaired.

"I didn't want to wait even one more day before I could start using it," Jones says. "ProDigits offers me functionality that I can't get anywhere else; it offers me the ability to grasp... I can pick something up and walk out to the car with it, rather than have to put it in a bag. Most importantly, I'm able to take care of my kids--play games with my kids, take them to school, make dinner."

Touch Bionics is probably best known for its i-Limb Hand, a full-hand prosthetic with five individually powered digits released in 2006. ProDigits takes this prosthetic a step further, because it caters to patients like Jones with partial hands on a case-by-case basis. The sockets themselves are custom-designed by clinicians to suit individual needs.… Read more

For The Wall Street Journal's ninth annual technology innovation awards, editor Michael Totty reviewed nearly 500 entries and, with a team of judges, weighed which of the top 180 were the most groundbreaking and which were most likely to prove useful during economic hardship. The top two awards both went to medical technologies, besting energy-efficient next-generation LEDs and paper-thin flexible speakers. Affordable health tech seems to have impressed the judges as its own sort of innovation.

The gold award went to the Ibis T5000, a sensor developed by Abbott Laboratories and its Ibis Biosciences unit that can quickly detect … Read more