Bionic hand maker Psyonic announced that its Ability Hand is set for national availability in September. The hand has been available in St. Louis, Chicago and Indianapolis for nearly two years under what the founder terms a “paid Beta.” During that time the company got a lot of real world feedback to improve their product. Founder and CEO Aadeel Akhtar says farmers, army veterans and a wide variety of people really beat up his product.
Aadeel Akhtar, Psyonic CEO
“ They’re going to put it through the wringer (and) we wanted to make sure… that when we are ready for a nationwide launch that this hand would last,” Akhtar told the 4thEst8. “One example was that we had some issues with our thumb. It was not strong enough… so we designed a new thumb joint that was flexible and can withstand impact a lot better.”
Other improvements were made to the software, and steps were taken to make the hand compatible with several prosthetic elbow and wrist systems on the market.
The Ability Hand can flex and extend all five fingers, rotate the thumb, and provides sensory feedback from the grip and fingertips. Psyonic uses a machine learning algorithm to detect different hand movements and Akhtar says the hand can recognize different movements and responses after as little as two minutes training. The device is covered by Medicare.
BACKGROUND
4thEst8 readers first heard of Psyonic in August, 2020 when the eight person startup landed a $739,000 Phase II SBIR grant to fuel commercialization and improvements to the Ability Hand. The Champaign, Ill. Startup was founded in 2015 and has brought in two Phase I SBIR’s totaling $500K, as well as $625K in seed funding from Illinois Ventures, iVenture Accelerator and MTT Ventures. Akhtar was recently named to the 2021 cohort of ’35 Innovators Under 35′ by the MIT Technology Review.
MARKET SIZE
According to Grand View Research, the 2019 global prosthetics and orthotics market size is estimated at $9.2 billion and is expected to exhibit a compound annual growth rate of 4.6% through 2027. Increasing incidence of sports injuries and road accidents, rising number of diabetes-related amputations, and the growing prevalence of osteosarcoma (bone cancer) around the world are poised to drive the global market.
Links:
On the 4thEst8:
Akhtar named MIT ‘top innovator’
Psyonic “May the Fourth” Video
