Eastern Michigan University has more than its foot in the door when it comes to prosthetics.
Excerpt:
A researcher at Eastern Michigan University and a company that makes prosthetic feet are working on a device that measures what happens when amputees use artificial limbs.
Frank Fedel and College Park Industries in Fraser jointly developed a tool called the Intelligent Prosthetic Endoskeletal Component System, or iPecs.
Company executive Mike Leydet said College Park hopes to have iPecs ready to release this fall.
Fedel said when he joined Eastern Michigan University's orthotics and prosthetics master's degree program in 2003, he was surprised by the lack of hard data on how and whether prosthetics worked the way they were supposed to.
"I wanted to see something that said, 'OK, we're making a difference,'" Fedel said in an interview on the school's Web site.
"In the past, when people with an amputation walked around, you'd have a person with experience in gait analysis look at someone with an amputation as they walked around and they'd say, 'OK, you look like you're walking normally,'" he said. "Or, if not, they'd try to adjust the prosthesis. But 'walking normally' is kind of a subjective thing."
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