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Orthocare Innovations Secures Technology License Through ORNL

Orthocare Innovations has secured a license through the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop prosthetic applications for mesofluidic technology in Oklahoma City, company officials said Thursday.

Ken Whitten demonstrates how his prosthetic arms work in comparison to a robotic arm driven by mesofluid technology as demonstrated by Orthocare Innovations during a press conference Thursday. Stuart Harshbarger with John Hopkins watches from the right.

The Oklahoma City-based medical device research and development company will work closely with ORNL, where the technology was initially developed for robotic and military applications, and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. Ultimately, it is expected that the mesofluidic work at Orthocare will help about 1.9 million amputees in the United States, ORNL senior research scientist Lonnie Love said, 'We have an aggressive growth plan, and collaborations with our technology partners... are going to enable us to accelerate that growth, creating more high-quality jobs in Oklahoma, and to improve the quality of life for persons with limb loss,' said David Boone, Orthocare Innovation's co-founder and chief technology officer.

The term mesofluidic is used to described hydraulics and actuators based on pressured fluid systems ranging from centimeters to millimeters in size, Love said. At their scale, mesofluidics provide high force density, low friction and direct drive at lower energy and cheaper construction costs. The technology has 10 times the power density of electric motors in the same size range, according to ORNL documents.

Love said a single robotic, human-size finger crafted with the mesofluidic technology can easily exert 20 pounds of pinch force with subtle precision; by comparison, it takes about 10 pounds of force to pull the tab on a typical can of cola.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee was established in 1943 specifically to produce and separate plutonium for the Wold War II Manhattan Project. Since then, the federally managed lab has evolved into a $1 billion budget operation with a wider focus on developing new energy sources, technologies and materials and fields including biological, chemical and environmental sciences. The miniaturization of robotics that led to the new mesofluidic systems at ORNL was initially intended to help remotely handle hazardous materials. 'The best we could do was a claw,' Love said. 'Now, with mesofluidics, we can create a highly dexterous hand... Not only can we handle radioactive material, but this has importance in disarming IEDs (improvised explosive devices, or bombs). You could send a pair of hands remotely by technician, and save lives.' As for Orthocare Innovation's part in future applications, Love said, 'Prosthetics is the main area of development we are looking at right now, but we are also interested in wearable or orthotic devices that amplify your strength and joints, which would be beneficial for physical rehabilitation. And what we're also hoping to see is other technologies in other medical fields as well, such as next generation robotic surgery,' he said.

Jay Martin, director of Orthocare Innovation's advanced systems group, said much of the company's early-stage research that led to the ORNL partnership would not have been possible without entrepreneurial financial assistance from OCAST, Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology.

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