{"id":7398,"date":"2017-05-19T13:28:34","date_gmt":"2017-05-19T17:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=7398"},"modified":"2017-05-22T13:25:54","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T17:25:54","slug":"breaking-the-mold-in-orthotics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2017\/05\/breaking-the-mold-in-orthotics\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the Mold in Orthotics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Alex<\/a>
Alex Mathews ’17 founded Fusiform with Param Shah.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a high school student, junior Param Shah spent summers in the Himalayas, volunteering to provide rehabilitation support for children with disabilities. Through a nonprofit he founded, the Lotus Life Foundation<\/a>, he provided orthotics to help kids with cerebral palsy, muscle deformities, or other conditions that affect walking gait.<\/p>\n

But waiting for the devices to be cast by hand and delivered often took a month or more. And if a child had grown even slightly, he or she would suffer discomfort or sores from the ill-fitting device in the meantime.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018How do we get better orthotics to these kids faster?\u2019\u201d Shah says.<\/p>\n

Enter Fusiform<\/a>. The med-tech startup, launched last year by Shah and Alex Mathews \u201917, with a team of five other Johns Hopkins students, aims to develop a faster, cheaper, software-driven alternative to the tedious and costly hand-casting process that still dominates the orthotics industry.<\/p>\n

Fusiform\u2019s idea is to automate the process of making orthotics, using 3-D scanning along with modification software it\u2019s developed. With an iPad or another tablet, a clinician can scan a 3-D image of a patient\u2019s leg, for example, and then modify the model. From there, the clinician can manufacture the orthotic device with an automated shaping machine in a matter of hours. This efficiency is made possible by Fusiform\u2019s modular design for orthotic devices\u2014an innovation in its use of removable parts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tackling a lot of inefficiencies in a process that hasn\u2019t adapted since the 1970s,\u201d says Mathews, a biomedical engineering<\/a> major.<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s vision recently got a big boost from Accelerate Baltimore<\/a>, which selected Fusiform as one of six startups to take part in its incubator program. Run by the Emerging Technology Centers<\/a>, the four-month boot camp provides each team with $25,000 in seed money, along with mentoring and networking opportunities.<\/p>\n

Simultaneously, Fusiform is getting further support by participating in Johns Hopkins\u2019 own incubator, the Social Innovation Lab<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fusiform tested both its modular cast design and its software with prospective clients throughout the spring.<\/p>\n

For their work on Fusiform, Shah and Mathews were recently named to the annual Forbes<\/em> 30 Under 30 list<\/a> in the Manufacturing and Industry category.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A med-tech startup launched last year by Param Shah and Alex Mathews \u201917, aims to develop a faster, cheaper, software-driven alternative to the tedious and costly hand-casting process that still dominates the orthotics industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[119,121,329,1598,1602,1606,1610,1614],"class_list":["post-7398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-students","tag-department-of-computer-science","tag-department-of-biomedical-engineering","tag-param-shah","tag-alex-mathews","tag-fusiform","tag-orthotics","tag-porsthetics","tag-accelerate-baltimore","issue-summer-2017"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBreaking the Mold in Orthotics - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2017\/05\/breaking-the-mold-in-orthotics\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Breaking the Mold in Orthotics - 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