Design and additive manufacturing of wrist therapy devices for people with muscle disorders

Abstract

In this modern era, Indonesia is faced with MEA (ASEAN Economic Community). According to data from the Indonesian Ministry of Health as many as 95 degree of medical devices in Indonesia are still imported products. Health problems also occur in many industries. Muscle injuries in the wrist are ranked 3 with 14.3 percent of workers who have suffered muscle injuries. One of the rehabilitation activities that can be done is physiotherapy. Physical therapy devices are widely available, but wrist therapy devices are still expensive and difficult to obtain in Indonesia. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a device, so that can be produced domestically at low prices. One technique that can support the developing of rehabilitation device is additive manufacturing. This technique has been widely applied in rehabilitation sector, for example to create finger orthosis and adaptive aid tools used by therapies. It is very suitable for rehabilitation sector, because it can create tools that accurately follow a patient’s unique anatomy. This study produces a device that can move patient’s wrist flexion and extension, with maximum range of motion 70 degree from normal position. The whole design produces a weight of 0.8 kg which can be categorized as portable.

A Designers' Perspective on Additive Manufactured Smart Wearables for Paediatric Habilitation

“…Martínez and Avilés (2020) present a methodology to design rehabilitation devices by following a systematic process, starting from identification of the problem up to prototyping, however overlooking the use of AM. Recently, AM is becoming more commonly utilised in the rehabilitation field to design products, from prosthesis and orthoses to more complex devices such as therapeutic devices as well as hearing aid parts (Lee et al, 2019;Effendi et al, 2020;Sabarish et al, 2021). As AM is maturing, it is essential to follow a structured framework to manufacture high-end products.…”