Description
La hand plays a role of primary importance in the activities of daily life. Its amputation causes a level of disability which has been estimated at 54%, but even the simple functional alteration of individual fingers due to deformity, caused by injury or disease, can contribute to considerably reducing the person's motor skills.
The incidence of upper limb amputations in Italy it is around 4000 new amputations each year. There is also a high number of patients who complain of functional alterations of the hand caused by orthopedic pathologies, injuries or neurological deficits. In Italy the number of patients affected by these problems is around 5000 units.
The 3D-AID project aims to develop solutions prosthetics e orthoses a low cost e Custom which these patients may benefit, for home use and/or during the performance of activities of daily life. This objective, until a few years ago impossible to achieve on a large scale due to the production costs linked to a customized process, seems to be achievable today thanks to the diffusion of a series of enabling technologies that make customized robotics economically viable.
The technologies of digital manufacturing (3D scanning and 3D printing) offer, in this context, a series of advantages: they allow the rapid creation of low cost, which faithfully replicate the anatomical features of the patient, allow the monitoring of the mechanical properties of the individual details, allow the creation of smart components with integrated custom sensory equipment and allow you to create soft structures to improve the wearability of the device and/or replicate the characteristics of the fabrics.
From the point of view of the IoT, the use of digital manufacturing technologies also makes it possible to imagine a production process distributed throughout the territory, with specific phases in charge of different professionals at their workplaces, and similarly a network of structures for direct assistance to patients, in a scenario that is overall effective, efficient and capable of realizing important economies of scale.