FIELD INTELLIGENCE Smart Processes, Solutions & Strategies
Jeff Huber
Cofounder, Software Engineer Standard Cyborg
www.standardcyborg.com
The secret of the power of software to change the world I
n August 2011, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen titled Why Software Is Eating the World. If that concept was controversial at the time, five years later it seems painfully obvious. We have Uber changing transportation, Airbnb changing rentals, and a million unsung software engineers in nearly every industry. How is software going to improve orthotics and prosthetics? We
started Standard Cyborg to answer this question for O&P. Our thesis is software is the answer to creating great, custom-fitting medical devices, at scale, globally, and this is in our DNA as engineers and wed with my experience as a patient. Every orthotic and prosthetic device has the piece that actually fits up
against the body. In prosthetics, we call this the socket. The goal of a socket is to transition the patient’s body weight comfortably
through the gait cycle and for long periods of ambulation. This is not a trivial thing to get right. Comfort is usually patient specific and therefore subjective. For all these reasons, a really great prosthetic socket can take a lot of time and effort to get right—yet it is also the most critical element of the system. A car is useless with a good steering wheel, a smartphone is useless without a touchscreen. Bad or non-existent interfaces are non-starters.
A 3D solution exists to massively improve clinical efficiency in the creation of custom medical devices. And digital manufacturing provides a labor-less and inexpensive way to bring these creations to life.
Globally, O&P is hurting. We are simply not training enough practitio-
ners to address the demand. With the global middle class coming online, hundreds of millions of people need custom medical devices. Addressing this market with current efficiencies is untenable.
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