MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
PSYONIC
By DEBORAH CONN
Extending a Hand Upper-limb manufacturer works with nonprofits to improve access in developing countries
A
ADEEL AKHTAR, PhD,
was only 7 when he first encountered someone with limb loss. “I was visiting Pakistan, and I saw this little girl—just my age— missing her right leg and using a broken tree branch as a crutch,” he recalls. He knew then that he wanted to do something to help that child and others like her. The result, 25 years later, is PSYONIC, a company whose mission is to develop advanced bionic limbs that are accessible to everyone. Akhtar earned his doctorate degree in neuroscience at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, and he holds master’s degrees in electrical and computer engineering and in computer science. He launched PSYONIC in 2015 as he was completing his doctorate and has spent four years developing and perfecting the Ability Hand, which Akhtar introduced at the 2019 AOPA Assembly in San Diego last month.
Ret. U.S. Army Sgt. Garrett Anderson uses the Ability Hand to interact with his daughter.
COMPANY: PSYONIC OWNER: Aadeel Akhtar, PhD LOCATION: Champaign, Illinois HISTORY: Four years
Anderson has been testing the prosthesis in various activities.
54
OCTOBER 2019 | O&P ALMANAC
Aadeel Akhtar, PhD
Deborah Conn is a contributing writer to O&P Almanac. Reach her at deborahconn@verizon.net.
PHOTOS: PSYONIC
The Ability Hand is a fully multiarticulated prosthetic hand. “All five fingers can flex and extend, and the thumb can rotate, both manually and electrically,” says Akhtar. The fingers, made of silicone and rubber, are flexible and impact-resistant. “You can take a hammer to the hand, and it will survive the blow,” he says.
Notably, the hand provides haptic feedback, using sensors in the index finger, pinky, and thumb that create a vibration in the socket. The vibration increases in intensity as additional pressure is applied, allowing users to use a grip strength appropriate to the object they are holding. “We are working with Garrett Anderson, a retired U.S. Army sergeant, who lost his arm below the elbow to a roadside explosive device in Iraq 14 years ago,” says Akhtar. “With the Ability Hand, Sgt. Anderson can tell how tightly he’s holding his young daughter’s hand.” Akhtar says he is hopeful that the prosthesis will be covered by Medicare using standard L codes. “The hand is made in the United States, and we leverage more cost-effective materials than traditional injection-molded plastics and custom-machined steel,” he notes. “Instead, we use two-part silicones and polyurethane, which are not only less expensive but have the added benefit of being impact-resistant.” PSYONIC is collaborating with the Range of Motion Project
(ROMP), a nonprofit dedicated to providing prosthetic and orthotic care to people around the world who can’t afford it. “According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 80 percent of amputees worldwide live in developing countries, and only 3 percent of them are able to access orthotic and prosthetic services,” says Akhtar. “Through ROMP, we were able to test an early prototype of the Ability Hand on a man who had lost his hand decades ago. Even though that early device was about three times the normal size and had wires everywhere, the patient said he felt as though a part of him had come back. He was able to make a pinching motion for the first time in 35 years.” Akhtar heads a staff of 12 employees, including a team of mechanical and electrical engineers, a research and development group, and a newly hired sales and support team. PSYONIC is based at the University of Illinois’s startup incubator in Champaign, which supported the company’s inception and has ceded all intellectual property rights to its products. Now that the Ability Hand is commercially available, Akhtar plans to work with nonprofits—such as ROMP, WHO, and the American Red Cross—to get the device to amputees in developing countries. PSYONIC’s immediate goals are to hold an initial launch in the Midwest and then expand nationally, but the company also is looking to the future. “We are already planning for osseointegration and implanting electrodes, and we expect to move to lower-extremity prostheses as well,” says Akhtar. “But for now, we are really excited to finally bring this to market, to make it accessible to everyone in the world who needs a hand.”