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One and a half year old Eve Darcy and her parents have a huge reason for joy: the girl has learned to walk on her own. It is noteworthy that since birth, Eve suffers from cerebral palsy. More precisely, the girl no longer just walks, but runs with might and main. Eve is supported by special 3D-printed orthoses "Magic Shoes", designed and manufactured by Australian startup AbilityMate. Before that, the baby could only walk, leaning on the rollator, and even then with great difficulty.
Problems with children's orthoses are in many ways similar to problems with children's prosthetics: children grow up quickly, and therefore orthoses require quick replacement. Here are just the manufacture of customized shoes with built-in clamps, from the manufacture of plaster casts and ending with the finished product with repeated adjustments and alterations, can take up to one year and poured into a tidy sum. In other words, only yesterday, such child therapy devices were rather impractical.
Now measurements are made using a 3D scanner, and ready-made orthoses can theoretically be tried on in a couple of days, as soon as 3D printing and assembly are completed. In practice, the waiting period results in several weeks when considering examinations, delivery and other work points, but even this is significantly better than the usual solutions. According to Melissa Fuller, co-founder of AbilityMate, the new technique will reduce waiting times by 50-80%, and at the same time increase the efficiency of specialized orthopedists by 400-600%.
As for the company, AbilityMate began its journey with a crowdfunding campaign that raised almost one hundred thousand dollars in November last year instead of the requested $ 20,000. One of the reasons explaining this success can be considered the prevalence of cerebral palsy - in Australia, a child with impaired functioning of the nervous system is born every 15 hours, making this disease one of the most common on the continent. Now the company is preparing to conduct clinical trials on children 2-8 years old. After certification, AbilityMate intends to make its orthoses publicly available in Australian clinics, expand the range and make the developments publicly available.
