Around the world, children and adults have debilitating conditions that require them to wear complex body braces. The current procedure to create these devices involves a lengthy process of plaster casts, measurements, fabrication, fitting, and modification as the patient grows. The founders of Andiamo in England went through this ordeal with their young son who was a quadriplegic, and after his death, they decided that there had to be a better way.
Their goal is to come up with a procedure that can produce a custom-fitted brace for an individual patient, not in 13 weeks, but in just two days. They use 3D scanning technology to quickly and painlessly image the patient’s body, then use 3D printers to fabricate a customized brace that addresses the specific needs of the patient.
The company is about one-third of the way toward reaching their crowd-funding goal on IndieGoGo. Their goal of $100,000 will be used to design and build prosthetic devices for three families for a year. These initial clinical tests will pave the way for commercial operations.
