PSYONIC Is Taking Advanced Bionic Prosthetics Into its own Hands

The First Touch-Sensing Bionic Hand

Part of my daily routine is to scroll through news stories in the morning. And I recently saw an article about limb loss that shocked me. Around 185,000 amputations occur each year in the U.S. — that’s 300 to 500 every day. And that number doesn’t include babies who are born with limb differences. Hanger Clinic expects 3.6 million people in the US will live with limb differences by 2050. People with limb differences and limb loss face challenges not only with daily activities, but with mental and financial health as well. Depression affects 36% of the limb loss community, and lifetime healthcare costs $150,000 more for people with limb differences compared to people with complete limbs.

Prosthetic limbs help many people with these challenges and daily activities. But it can be hard to find a prosthetic that’s both affordable and functional. Traditional passive (meaning they are not functional, but appear similar to a natural arm) silicone prosthetics typically cost $5,000 (without insurance) but have very limited functionality. Bionic hands can cost anywhere from $10,000 to more than $50,000 depending on the manufacturer.

But what if there wasn’t an inherent trade-off between price and function? That’s why I’m excited to introduce PSYONIC, a company that aims to provide advanced prosthetic limbs at an affordable price. PSYONIC has developed a bionic arm called the Ability Hand. The prosthetic integrates with most third-party electromyographs (Learn the lingo: electromyographs assess the health of muscles and the nerve cells that control them) which allows users to control the prosthetic just through muscle movement. It is designed to be one of the fastest bionic hands in the market in terms of changing from one grip to another. It features 32 different grips that users can control — either with their muscles or with an app — to point, grasp, give a thumbs-up, and more. This is also the world’s first bionic hand that lets users sense touch by detecting pressure on the index finger, pinky, and thumb and sending vibrations to a motor in the prosthetic’s socket. And as an added bonus, users can even charge their phones with it!

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