Teenage tinkerer creates low-cost, high tech prosthesis

Friday, August 16, 2013

Modern medicine is amazing, but the technology involved can be prohibitively expensive -- one of the many problems Obamacare will have to address as it goes into effect.

It doesn't have to be that way, if advances in technology are allowed to bring costs of medical equipment down the same way they have slashed the costs of consumer electronics.

Consider Easton LaChappelle, who was 14 when he built a robotic hand using Legos, servo motors and fishing line, winning third place in the 2011 Colorado State science fair.

While there, he met a 7-year-old girl who was wearing a state-of-the-art prosthetic arm that cost a cool $80,000.

He thought he could do better, and set out to prove it.

Using off-the-shelf computer-aided design software, he accessed an online database of open-source, ready-made models, created an arm design and fed the parts into a $1,000 3D printer -- estentially a laser printer that builds up three-dimensional parts, layer by layer.

The result was a prosthetic arm that cost about $250 to build, winning him an invitation to the third annual White House Science Fair. There, he showed it to none other than President Barack Obama, who shook the arm's hand and suggested LaChappelle show it to DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- which is funding the development of advanced prosthetics.

He's since built a more advanced model, with better, more accurate and stronger motors and gears, controlled by a headband that measures brainwaves, is lighter than a human arm -- and costs less than $500.

LaChappelle, now 17, did get the attention of other federal officials -- NASA's Johnson Space Center, where he's working with the Robonaut team to develop telerobotics control.

But he hasn't forgotten the girl he met at the state science fair.

"My goal for all of this is to create an affordable prosthetic," he told a writer at the online Gizmag magazine. "I am continuing my work to achieve that goal. I have started on the third generation of the arm, which will easily top everything so far!"

Three-dimensional printing is revolutionizing manufacturing at all levels, from Boeing's latest aircraft to basement tinkerers around the world. But it has special potential for one-off, custom uses such as creating prosthetics.

Let's hope established medical interests are not allowed to frustrate people like LaChappelle in their efforts to give disabled people access to low-cost solutions.

Watch LaChappelle's talk here.

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