Biomedical students utilize 3D printing
Prosthetic hands for children among medical advances
College and high school students in Greater Cincinnati are using 3D printing to solve medical problems in the community.
A group of biomedical engineering students at the University of Cincinnati started a student organization in 2015 to build inexpensive prosthetic hands for local kids.
Inspired by the global organization e-Nable, Enable UC can build a custom, functional hand in its lab on campus for less than $20 — instead of thousands of dollars — and get it to the patient in about a week. Pediatric patients aren’t charged a penny and are able to shake someone’s hand, catch a football or ride a bike with two hands.
These devices aren’t meant to replace prostheses developed in collaboration with a medical professional. They’re designed to be affordable and accessible tools for kids. The artificial hands are made out of plastic and don’t use electrical sensors or robotics. Making them this way reduces the cost of supplying multiple prostheses when kids grow out of them and can be easily replaced if they break.
So far, in the group’s less than two years of existence, students have built 42 prosthetic hands and assistive devices. And they want to do more.
“This is empowering students to have a direct impact in the life of someone with a disability,” said Jacob Knorr, a 22-year-old biomedical engineering student and president of Enable UC.
The first person to receive a hand from Enable UC was a 13year-old boy named Brody who was born with a partial right hand. It was hard for Brody to steer a bike, throw a ball or hold a lacrosse stick because of his disability, according to the university. Enable UC made a hand that looked like a Star Wars Storm- trooper for Brody, a huge fan of the movie franchise, so he could play with other kids his age.
The group’s most recent hand recipient was 15-year-old T.J. McGinnis, a varsity football player at Rock Hill High School in Ironton, Ohio. T.J. was born with a partial right hand and had never experienced using two hands before meeting the Enable UC team.
UC students find a patient or a patient finds them, often through relationships with UC Health and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
To produce a prosthetic hand, students don’t need to meet with a patient. All they need is a pic- ture of the patient’s arm that needs the prosthetic, Knorr said.
Then, the students go online and find a 3D design file of a hand or fingers from e-Nable — a global open source organization and volunteer network that provides free prosthetic hands to kids in need around the world.
The organization allows anyone with access to a 3D printer to make a prosthetic hand using its design files, which inspired the creation of UC’s student group. Students at Xavier University and Walnut Hills High School are also using the e-Nable program to build prosthetics with 3D printers.
The downloadable file is, in essence, instructions the 3D printer can read. The students can make adjustments and scale the file according to the patient’s disability to make sure the hand will fit.
Next, the students order the plastic materials to make the prosthetic and then load them in the printer like ink. Digital instructions are then sent to the printer and within 12 to 24 hours all the parts, including pins and hinges, are made.
The print process is slow and isn’t always perfect. Imagine printing off thousands of pages at your home computer and after eight hours of waiting, there’s a paper jam — it is a machine after all. Then, you’d have to reload the printer and wait for another 12 to 24 hours.
Once the pieces are printed, the team fits them together to make the plastic hand functional, wearable and comfortable for the patient, which takes a few hours.
Elastic keeps the hand open and a tensioned twine is tied to all the fingers, which is anchored to the wrist. So, when patients flex their wrist, the strings are pulled and the hand closes.
It takes about a week from the time the team finds a patient to having a completed product that’s ready to use. The prosthetic hand costs less than $20 to build and it’s free for the patient, a cost that’s completely subsidized by the university by funding costs for materials and printing. According to e-Nable, a professionally made, muscle-actuated hand can cost between $6,000 and $10,000.
The UC students are also using 3D printing to build other assistive devices for the occupational and physical therapy programs at Touro University in New York. They aren’t prosthetic hands but tools that patients use to carry out everyday tasks they normally couldn’t.
They built a device for a patient who had suffered a traumatic brain injury so that he would be able to drink independently at the dinner table. Students have also created devices that help patients to open a bottle of nail polish and play the violin.
“We’re trying to help people live their lives a bit easier,” Knorr said.
Christine Geeding, the clinical director at the Corryville-based J.F. Rowley Prosthetic and Orthotics Lab, said the innovation of 3D printing could make prosthetics more accessible and affordable.
“3D printing is going to have a really good place in prosthetics; it’s just not there yet,” Geeding said.
Printers need to be able to use stronger material and print faster, she said. When that happens, it could bring down the whole price as manufacturers are able to make the parts people can use cheaper.
Geeding ’s office specializes in pediatrics, and she said they rarely see patients looking for prosthetic hands or fingers because the human body adapts and compensates for the loss. Often, the loss doesn’t become a concern for a patient until adolescence, when it becomes more of a cosmetic issue.
“This is empowering students to have a direct impact in the life of someone with a disability.” Jacob Knorr, biomedical engineering student and president of Enable UC