Engineers Pitch Medical Marvels with Motion Systems
From: Medical Technology Supplement to Design News - 12/10/2007 - page S5
By: Lawrence D. Maloney

A veteran of the Iraq war yearns to perform normal activities after losing a
hand to a roadside bomb. A stroke victim wants to regain use of a partially
paralyzed limb. 

Design engineers, working with medical professionals, are devising solutions
to all these challenges. Engineers at Johns Hopkins University, for example,
are leading a global effort to design the most sophisticated bionic arm ever.
In Massachusetts, two young MIT engineering grads have devised a motorized
brace to re-educate muscles in stroke victims. 

Projects:
1. Bionic Miracle: Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009
At Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab (APL) in Laurel, MD, Stuart
Harshbarger and his team are leading a project that most engineers would
consider impossible: Design a bionic limb that closely mimics the look, feel
and movement of a human arm and hand. 

2. Myomo e100: Restoring Body Movement
While doing engineering graduate school work at MIT in robotics, John McBean
and Kailas Narendran began a project that promises to reverse the gloomy
prognosis that only 5 percent of stroke survivors regain full arm function.
Working under MIT design professor Woody Flowers, the two received a
foundation grant to work on a new therapeutic device. Five years later, after
a series of prototypes and clinical studies, their work has resulted in an
FDA-approved medical device for stroke rehabilitation called the e100
NeuroRobotic System. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.designnews.com/article/CA6506090.html?section=supplement

Links:
Johns Hopkins University - Applied Physics Lab
http://www.jhuapl.edu/

Liberating Technologies of Massachusetts
http://www.liberatingtech.com/

Northwestern University's Biomedical Engineering Department
http://biomaterials.bme.northwestern.edu/

e100 NeuroRobotic System
http://www.myomo.com/about_us/in_news.shtml

Revolutionizing Prosthetics
http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrusts/bio/restbio_tech/revprost/index.htm

Imagining a bionic future
http://www.optevi.net/newstracker/default.aspx?f=3&e=70389

Armed with Ideas - APL Leads Prosthesis Development Team
http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/aplnews/2006/prostheticarm.asp

Kailas Narendran
http://www.indianngos.com/people/kailasnarendran.htm

Robotic Arm For Stroke Patients Gets FDA Approval
http://wbztv.com/seenon/MIT.Stroke.Patients.2.588363.html

Kailas Narendrans Research at MIT Helps Disabled
http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?id=050706113813
