Bionic hand wind engineering award
A
Royal Academy of Engineering product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Jun 11, 2008
The i-LIMB Hand is a prosthetic device that looks and acts like a real human hand with five individually powered digits.
Touch Bionics, inventor of the world's first commercially available bionic hand, the i-LIMB Hand, has won the 2008 Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award.
HRH the Duke of Edinburgh presented the team with a GBP 50,000 prize and the solid gold MacRobert Award medal at the Academy Awards Dinner at Merchant Taylors' Hall in London.
The team members sharing the prize are: Chief Executive Officer Stuart Mead, Director of Research and Founder David Gow, Project Manager Stewart Hill, Director of Technology and Operations Hugh Gill, Director of Marketing Phil Newman and Project Co-ordinator Nicky Holt, all based at Touch Bionics in Livingston.
The i-LIMB Hand is a prosthetic device that looks and acts like a real human hand with five individually powered digits.
The key innovation behind Touch Bionics' i-LIMB Hand is the multiarticulating finger technology, which has underpinned the product's resounding commercial success since its launch.
The i-LIMB Hand is manufactured using high-strength plastics.
The result is a next-generation prosthetic device that is lightweight, robust and highly appealing to both patients and healthcare professionals.
Ray Edwards is a quadruple amputee who had the i-LIMB hand fitted a month ago and says it has changed his life.
Ray survived Hodgkins Disease only to have all four limbs amputated in 1987 after he developed septicaemia.
He now runs a construction company customising houses for disabled people and is acting chair of the UK Limbless Association.
"When I first looked down and saw the i-LIMB hand I just cried", says Ray.
"i-LIMB has helped me more psychologically than physically".
"That was the first time in 21 years that I had seen a hand opening there - it made me feel I was just Ray again".
"You can do so much with technology but it's got to make the user happy - and i-LIMB does".
The i-LIMB Hand started life in 1963 in a research programme at Edinburgh's Princess Margaret Rose Hospital to help children affected by Thalidomide.
London's Science Museum will be showcasing the iLIMB prosthetic hand in a special display in the Antenna science news gallery.
The free exhibition runs from Thursday 12th June for three months.
The display will give visitors a opportunity to see the technology for themselves.
The Antenna gallery is devoted entirely to new developments in the fast-moving world of science and technology represented through a series of constantly-updated exhibitions.
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