An engineering team out of North Dakota State University landed one of ten inaugral OZY Genius awards with their design for a more affordable 3D printed prosthetic arm. Their design, which they created for 3-year-old Jameson Davis, costs only $400 dollars compared to similar designs which can retail for up to $30,000.

“I think it’s asinine that there are people out there that literally can’t afford to have an arm,” said Andrew Dalman, an engineer on the team.

Dalman originally thought of the idea to build a prosthetic arm at the beginning of this year, after seeing a news release for a child with a new 3D-printed arm. Many of these models are posted as open source in the hopes that other engineers will improve upon them, and Dalman saw this as a way to utilize NDSU’s lab capabilities.

When he brought the idea up to Dr. David Wells, professor of industrial and mechanical engineering at NDSU, Wells not only loved the idea but mentioned he had a patient in mind.

Hands for Jameson

Jameson Davis is a 3-year-old amputee. He is the son of Dr. Wells’ niece, Brooke Davis, and her husband Jim. For reasons unknown, Jameson was born a bilateral trans radial congenital amputee, meaning he was missing both lower arms and hands at birth.

“There is no known cause,” his mother said. “Doctors are calling it a fluke accident in the womb.”

The Davis’ introduced prosthetics to Jameson at an early age, as is recommended, equipping him with prosthetic arms from Advanced Arm Dynamics. Each set costs the Davis’ $25,000, and must be replaced each year as Jameson grows, with each set progressively more expensive. Their insurance only covers up to 44 percent of the cost.

To raise funds and awareness, Brooke started a blog called Davis Day 2 Day, which includes a donation section called Hands for Jameson. The effort even prompted amputee bicyclist Hector Picard to bike 3,200 miles to meet Baby Jameson at his home in Washington.

The Truly Affordable 3D Printed Prosthetic Arm

Now, Jameson is getting another visit. This past week, Dr. Wells traveled from Fargo to Washington to deliver the new prosthetic arm, which Jameson should receive this week. While the arm is not yet complete, the family will be able to critique and test it out, before sending it back to the Fargo team to be completed by July.

The arm is the product of a capstone project by NDSU students Cooper Bierscheid and May graduates Andrew Dalman, Tyler Skeate and Michael Walmsley. It includes a wrist, elbow, hand grasp and a pinch, and is completely 3D printed. It can be reprinted at any scale to fit the child as he grows.

Oh, and instead of $25,000, this arm costs about $400.

“The family is paying up to $150,000 for these prosthetics, that are too heavy and too long for Jameson,” said Dr. Wells. “These students have cut the cost down by a factor of 50, and also custom designed it so that it fits a child, and is light and flexible.”

According to the NDSU team, there is no concrete answer as to why traditional prosthetics are so expensive in the first place.

“There’s high costs because of custom manufacturing, and there’s overhead costs that we don’t know how to break down yet,” Dalman said. “The short of it is we don’t know exactly why they are that expensive”

In any case, now that they have a working design, their goal is to distribute the arms particularly to those who cannot afford traditional prosthetics. They hope to do this as a non-profit through donations or sponsoring, and partnering with North Dakota companies to aid in manufacturing.

Currently the team is working to start a business centered around their product, called Protosthetics.

“They are a rather unusual team,” said Dr. Wells, the team’s adviser. “Certainly for their superior level of achievement, but also for their motivation to establish at least one new business enterprise to manufacture pediatric prosthetics.”

Profiting from the design was never part of the plan, the team said.

“We want to get these to the kids that need them,” said Bierscheid, a lead engineer on the team. “As engineers, we’re trying to push society forward. If we can improve the well being of society in this manner, that’s what our goal is. That’s part of the engineering code of ethics.”

As a way to share the work they’re doing, Bierscheid wrote a competition entry for the OZY Genius Award competition, held for the first time this year by the online media company OZY. He titled their entry, “A Truly Affordable 3-D Printed Prosthetic Arm.”

The OZY Award

They never expected to get the award, Bierscheid said. But out of hundreds of applicants from all around the world, they were chosen as one of ten. Each winner will receive a stipend of up to $10,000 to pursue their projects, and will also be part of an OZY Films documentary this fall that chronicles their progress.

“It was a surprsie to win, but it shows that people actually believe in our ideas,” Bierscheid said.

The ten OZY award recipients span the globe, including the U.S., Kenya, Malawi, Ghana and Korea, with projects ranging from filming a documentary to superconducting at room temperature.

“We had hundreds of submissions from around the world, and this inaugural class is a great cross-section of science and the humanities,” said Carlos Watson, OZY co-founder and CEO. “It’s a group of very socially conscious projects.”

Judges for the OZY application process included social and education activist Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’ widow, and Google executive David Drummond. Thus far, Birscheid had a video interview with Watson but expects to meet the rest of the OZY investors over the course of the summer. He plans to travel to OZY headquarters in Mountain View, CA this fall to work on the documentary.

New Arms for Jameson

As for 3-year-old Jameson, he is still getting acquainted with using prosthetic arms.

“He still does not fully understand why he needs them,” Brooke Davis said. “We are trying to teach him that they are definitely useful, but for him they are frustrating because they do not have moving fingers or tactile sensation.”

With the introduction of a new arm, Brooke said she hopes the increased ability for movement will help Jameson – not to mention the financial help it will bring the family.

“As his parents, we are hoping that this particular arm with articulating fingers will be easier for him to use, look and act more like ‘real fingers’ much like everyone else’s that he sees,” she said. “And be less expensive…the prosthetic arms we have now are quite costly we’ve been told this is a much more affordable option. This would be wonderful as we anticipate needing several more sets as he grows.”

For the team at NDSU, giving Jameson the arm and winning the OZY award are only the beginning.

“We want every kid that needs one to have a prosthetic arm,” Bierscheid said, “That’s our long-term goal.”

 

Read more about the Truly Affordable 3D Printed Prosthetic Arm right here.

Contact the Protosthetcis team at: protosthetics@gmail.com

You can also find them on Facebook and Twitter.

Photos courtesy of Davis Day 2 Day blog and Cooper Bierscheid.