How this innovative plastic design is giving mobility back to thousands of amputees
A new plastic 'hands-free crutch' is giving a fresh lease of life to amputees in the United States. Laura Hughes, editor of Medical Plastics News, caught up with iWalkFree president, Brad Hunter to learn about the background of the project.
It wasn’t until Hunter suffered a bad ankle sprain that he realised how truly limiting crutches could be. He explained that, although the injury had made him lose the use of his leg, the crutches made him lose the use of his hands and arms. Simple tasks like cooking food, folding laundry, or even navigating through a spring loaded door were in Hunter’s words, “nearly impossible” on crutches. Then, as if using the crutches wasn’t enough of a hindrance, the side effects such as pain in the hands, wrists and armpits only served to compound the issue.
On a quest to find a better alternative to crutches, Hunter went on the lookout for an orthopaedic boot. He found one on private party sales site, Craigslist, and decided to take the plunge. He tells me that when he arrived to collect the boot however, he noticed that the seller also had a first generation iWALKFree crutch.
Hunter remembers how he thought that the iWALKFree device was a “game changer” and found himself wondering why this device wasn’t the go-to device for lower leg injuries. He describes how he knew he wasn’t alone in this belief as, “whenever I went out in public, I would be approached by random strangers who wanted to know all about the iWALK and share how much they hated crutches when they had their injury.”
Intrigued and impressed by this device, Hunter conducted some research in to the company and found out that it was essentially a one man operation, being run by a Canadian farmer who founded the company. He explains: “Essentially, they had a highly disruptive technology begging for more development. While the first generation iWALK was good, it needed to evolve in order to become commercially viable.”
Today, Hunter runs the company and is the single largest shareholder.
From the outset, the iWALK2.0 was designed so that manufacture was scalable. Hunter commented how, “for the major structural plastic parts, we started by selecting common, readily available materials, determining the material properties, and designing the parts around these properties.” The reason for this was to ensure that the manufacture of the device wasn’t dependent on either a specially compounded material or the expertise of any one moulder.
In terms of the frame, it is made of tubular aluminium extrusions. Hunter mentioned how this was, “patterned after crutches and canes, since manufacture of these items was completely mature, and many suppliers are capable of producing the tubing we use.”
All of the manufacturing culminates in an ISO13485 rated facility in California near Hunter’s office. This means that if a field call is required, Hunter and his colleagues can be on site in 15 minutes.
Simplicity is one of the huge advantages of the iWALK2.0 device. In order to achieve this, there was lots of research conducted during the development of this device. Many factors were considered by Hunter during the development process, such as:
- Human factor - the iWALK2.0 fits 95% of the adult population, and human proportions vary greatly
- Gait adaptation - motion capture technology was used to compare human gait to iWALK gait in order to keep the amount of gait adaptation to a minimum
- Leg geometry – adjustments were made to allow the device to be tailored
- Adjustable - a simple device the end user can adjust themselves
- Convertible - the ability to make the device easily transferable from the left to right leg
- The assembly of the device
- Packaging
In terms of selecting the best material for this device, Hunter explains how for moulded parts they worked with the moulders to analyse the specific requirements of each part, to determine the best choice of material. The part was then designed to work harmoniously with the properties of the chosen material.
Plastic was chosen for certain parts of the device as it provided the best combination of weight, strength, stiffness, ergonomic shapes, and cost according to Hunter.
Hunter describes how, “not unlike most devices” factors such as consumer safety, utility, comfort, ease of use, commercial viability, scalability of manufacture, packaging and storage all had to be considered when designing the device.
However, there was surprisingly few challenges experienced when developing iWALK2.0. Hunter puts this down to his copious previous experience in manufacturing. Hunter comments: “You develop a nose for potential problems, and we identified those and addressed them in the design phase.” Additionally, Hunter highlights their choice of quality manufacturing partners as another reason for so little challenges being experienced with the development of the device.
The benefits the device is able to offer amputees is vast, however, it is important to note that the device is also suitable for anyone with a common lower leg injury such as a broken ankle, foot fracture or Achilles rupture.
iWALK2.0 debuted at the medical device show Medtrade in North America. At the event the device took home all of the awards – an accomplishment never achieved before. The following year iWALK2.0 again took home all of the awards from the trade show. The company believe these rewards are a sign of recognition from the medical community for the innovative, functional and affordable iWALKFree2.0.