The Journal of mHealth Vol 1 Issue 6 (Dec 2014) | Page 10

INDUSTRY
NEWS
News and Information for
Digital Health Professionals

Bionic Arm Restores
Sense of Feeling
Advances in bionic hands
have restored a sense of
touch to two patients
for more than a year,
report US scientists.

Mr Spetic can tell, while
blindfolded,
whether
he

years.
A team at Case Western Reserve University a ttached sensors to the bionic hand and in surgery fitted "cuffs" around the
remaining nerves, which were capable of delivering electronic
stimulation. This allowed the team to send different patterns
of electronic stimulation to the nerves using a computer, which
were then interpreted in the brain as different sensations.
The team "mapped" these sensations to 19 different locations
on the hand, from the palm to the tip of the thumb, and matched
the sensors to the different electronic patterns of stimulation.
One of the beneficiaries of the American work was Igor
Spetic, who lost his right hand in an accident four years ago.
He was fitted with a bionic replacement, but it was incapable
of feeling the world around him. He had to carefully watch
what he was doing and judge by eye whether he was squeezing too hard. With the help of the new technology Spetic is
now able to perform extremely delicate tasks, like removing
the stalks from cherries.

8

The team have also refined the technology to enable identification of different pressure and textures. For example,

December 2014

is handling different materials such as
Velcro or sandpaper. He has been using the
sensing hand for two-and-a-half years. Another
patient has been using the system for one and a half

Mr Spetic said: "I would love to feel my wife's hand, just to hold
hands would be the ultimate."
Lead researcher Prof Dustin Tyler said "They can do really fine
delicate tasks now. We believe within five to ten years we will
have a system that is completely implanted. So that a person
would have the procedure to put electrodes on each nerve and
a device for their pocket, so that when they turn it on they can
feel their hands."
In both patients the modified hand had the added bonus of
eliminating "phantom limb pain", in which patients still feel pain
from the hand that is no longer there.
Meanwhile another recent trial has seen scientists at Chalmers
University of Technology in Sweden implant the first boneanchored bionic arm.
The technique known as "osseointegration" involved connecting the arm directly to the bone, nerves and muscles in the residual stump of the patient's arm.
Dr Max Ortiz Catalan who led the research said: "We have used