Member Spotlight
BY DEBORAH CONN
COMPANY:
OWNERS:
LOCATIONS:
HISTORY:
Amparo Prosthetics
Wesley Teerlink and Stuart Mead
Headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah; Aylesbury, United Kingdom; and Berlin, Germany
Seven years
Quick Fitting
W
Amparo Prosthetics offers the Confidence Socket, which is built directly on the patient. The system comes with a mobile clinic so patients can be fit in their homes or other locations.
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O&P Almanac October 2023
Socket system that launched in Europe expands to the United States
esley Teerlink discovered the field of prosthetics in graduate school, where he and two other mechanical engineering and design students were assigned prosthetic socket technology as a research subject. Their work led to an innovative design and process, and in 2016, they founded Amparo GmbH to manufacture and commercialize the Confidence Socket. “We discovered in our research that the socket component is difficult and time-consuming to create and can be the bottleneck of the whole experience,” Teerlink says. “We wanted to change this for users. And because of our varied backgrounds, we approached this problem in a different way.” Their solution was to build the socket directly on the patient. The project took first place in the Innovation Showcase of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2016 and has garnered top prizes in other competitions since then. In 2021, the company moved its European administrative headquarters to the United Kingdom, while retaining its warehouse and logistics platform in Germany. Most of Amparo’s customers were in Europe, South America, and Asia, but Teerlink also knew the U.S. market would benefit. A native of Utah, Teerlink had connections there and saw opportunities for medical device manufacturers, so in 2022 the company founded Amparo Prosthetics Inc. in the United States, and added a four-person team in charge of manufacturing. Teerlink’s fellow founders moved on to other projects, and he brought in a new partner, Stuart Mead, the former chief executive officer of Touch Bionics. The Confidence Socket is made with a prefabricated cone composed of Amparo’s proprietary thermoplastic composite. It has a low melting temperature but is strong enough to function as a prosthetic device for years, Teerlink says. The socket comes with a preassembled and offset mounting plate and either a pin or valve suspension model. The clinician heats the cone in a mobile oven and uses a heat gun to form the socket. The material becomes malleable, but it retains its cone shape, which the clinician stretches on to the patient, drawing a vacuum and creating a functional socket in about an hour.
The Amparo system comes with a mobile clinic, which includes a portable oven, vacuum pump, sockets, suspension units, and accessories. As a result, clinicians can fit patients in their homes or other locations in just one visit. “We make the cones in two sizes, so they accommodate most below-knee amputees,” says Teerlink. “The best part is that, as the residual limb loses volume, we can reheat the socket and completely remold it to fit.” This makes the system especially useful for new limb loss patients, who go through volume changes very quickly, he explains. “With our system, they don’t have to sit around in a wheelchair waiting for a new socket because we can remold it in about an hour.” As an added benefit for O&P facilities, same-day delivery eliminates the delay between paying for the device and being reimbursed. Amparo offers training to facilities in the United States through a seven-member team of clinicians and sales representatives. “We offer a half- or one-day course where practitioners can bring in a friendly patient and do the whole process multiple times, with guidance from our technical staff,” says Teerlink. “We also offer group classes, and we have an online training portion that can speed up the process.” The company is committed to corporate citizenship, working with nonprofits and selling products at a large discount in places that have the need. Amparo has had grants to do outreach projects in Kenya. Because Amparo’s system enables fitting patients with a fully functioning device in one visit, Teerlink is hopeful the technology may one day be used to provide fast fittings for amputees in war-torn areas, such as Ukraine. “We are always looking for opportunities and partners to help get our technology to those who need it most,” he says. Teerlink is excited about the expansion to the United States. “We are a young, small company, but our product has been well proven clinically in Europe. We have more than 3,000 patients in 200-plus locations with resounding user satisfaction,” he says. “We’re looking forward to reaching out to those who need us in North America.” Deborah Conn is a contributing writer to O&P Almanac. Reach her at deborahconn@verizon.net.
PHOTO CREDITS: AMPARO PROSTHETICS