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 Narendran’s Research at MIT Helps Disabled http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?id=050706113813