This week our team joined leading companies in prosthetics to talk best practises, get inspired and share knowledge on how best to care and serve the amputee and limb different community.

If you are someone with a limb difference, here are the trends we saw at the trade show that should mean, more options, more reliability of products, and easier accessibility!

1. There are a LOT of bionic hands on the market!

When we started Open Bionics 10 years ago, there were just 3 adult only bionic hands available and multi-grip technology was considered new and experimental. Well, that’s not the case anymore. There were at least 12 bionic hands on show, most of which are commercially available and each focussing their own unique area of performance. This is fantastic news for the upper limb different community, with more choice than ever, and more competition driving faster innovation, new features and better products.

2. Welcome to the 3D Printing Party!

When we said that 3D printing was going to be a great technology for prosthetics back in 2014, many industry leading companies dismissed the technology as not having a future in prosthetics and orthotics. We were told repeatedly that we’d never be able to bring a 3D printed prosthesis to market and the conference halls had NO 3D printed devices at all. Fast forward to present day and the conference halls are filled with clinicians discussing the benefits of the digital pathway. We now see those same companies investing enormously in 3D printing as they discover the benefits that it can unlock for patients. We’re proud to have pioneered the industry adoption of this technology and to continue leading the charge towards sockets with better volume management, flexibility, comfort, ventilation and much lighter weight. 

3. Digitise Everything!

In order to 3D print stuff you need a virtual 3D model of the stuff. When we started out, we recognised a need to retain a digital model of a patient’s limb and we developed our BioForm process to automate the customisation of our Hero Arm design. This brought “memory” to the industry for the first time. This gives Open Bionics a unique advantage, it enables us to make incremental improvements to a patient’s fit over time to achieve optimal comfort. When that socket wears out, a new one can be made to the exact same specification without the need to revisit the clinic for another fitting. Multiple perfect sockets printed years apart without any need for travel! Many O&P clinics still do not offer this service, they take a plaster cast only to capture limb shape and then destroy the cast! If you loved the fit, it could never be guaranteed again. OTWorld 2024 showcased a huge range of 3D scanners and Computer Aided Design software to help O&P practitioners take their incredible clinical work into the digital world and leverage these same patient benefits within their own clinical workflows. We’re really excited to see the industry recognising the benefits of a digitized workflow and bringing them to patients outside of the Hero Arm universe.

Want to talk to our team about finding the right solution for you? Register here to request information.

We were at OT World to demonstrate the Hero Arm a multi-grip prosthesis for children and adults, the Hero Gauntlet a new active partial prosthesis, and the Hero Flex, a lightweight activity arm compatible with 50 different terminal devices.