University researchers have been developing software for a machine that can produce medical braces for a variety of patients, helping to save health services money, time and space and cutting serious environmental pollution.
Currently medical braces - or orthotics - are tailored to an individual patient for use in occupational therapy, rehabilitation and the treatment of fractures or deformities. A new mould for each orthotic is produced for every patient in a messy, time and labour intensive process, with a large amount of storage space required for any unused moulds.
But a team of researchers, led by Vice-Provost for Research Professor Nabil Gindy and Dr Yan Wang, plan to replace dedicated moulds with a reconfigurable array of pins capable of producing a large variety of moulds. By utilising reconfigurable screw-pins to control the shape of a former, the same pin array can be reconfigured and reused many times.
A scanner would capture the geometry of a patient's body with the captured image then being transferred directly to a hybrid machine capable of using this image to produce a vacuum formed cast directly.
It is estimated that the new technology would overcome the traditional lead time and cost issues associated with manufacturing components in low volumes.
The cost of a one off machine is approximately £38,500. As an example, if the machine was used at Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre, the investment would be returned after eight months and the hospital would save £123,000 over three years.
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