As we continue our journey into the world of open source medical devices we have to talk about 3D printing! There are a number of wonderful independent and group open source makers developing millions of assistive tools for 3D printing share sites. If you go searching for them you can find anything from wrist braces to mobility devices and even specific bolts that are needed for medical equipment that aren’t easily accessible worldwide.
One of these groups is MakeGood Inc, a nonprofit organization that makes assistive devices for people with physical disabilities. They specialize in fitting devices to the user, creating tools that can remove the accessibility gaps in the world. Whether it is a mobility device or a tool to be able to play guitar, MakeGood has it.
In 2021 MakeGood Executive Director Noam Platt had a local family reach out to aid in the creation of an adaptive toilet seat. They wanted to travel and the standard assistive seats that you can get commercially are bulky and heavy and difficult to bring through an airport.
“So the challenge was, can we make an adaptive toilet seat that can go through an airport and go into the airplane,” Platt recalled. “That's a very complicated project I learned, I worked on that for a couple years and there is a great prototype. We're still working on it here and there.”
One of the benefits of MakeGood’s system is that they can continue to work and adapt old projects to meet new needs or eliminate unnecessary production issues. MakeGood has delivered thousands of adaptive devices. They have core designs that they share openly and make updates upon request, as well as take on highly specific tools created for individuals.
“I have one [device] in front of me, a phone holder that I use every day that I like to show people. It uses a MagSafe magnet and a [printed plastic] cuff. It's able to be the size that is needed and can pretty easily change for other people,” said Philip Dunham, the Design Director for MakeGood.
You can get the print off of makerworld and it comes with the option to be made to be for the left or right hand. There’s also 11 other models on their page to address other access needs.
“ We've done a lot of legwork with the hospitals to get them on board in the past four years to really be on our team and working with us,” Platt said. “As opposed to when we started, which is like our first meeting with the healthcare system, five lawyers showed up.”
This is not uncommon for folks working in open healthware to experience distrust from the medical system, it thrives off of its regulatory bodies and tends to be relatively nervous about anyone perceived as an ‘outsider’ to the system.
“ We've been really vociferously defending our independence and our autonomy as an organization. That allows us to work with multiple hospitals and work with them how we want to work with them. So we really try to make sure we set the rules and are doing things the way we like to do things and not let big institutional groups kind of get in the way,” Platt said.
The group now has 7 people working on developing and making tools for people.
The naming procedure within the group is to christen devices after who they were made for. It creates a lovely project page when you scroll through and see the amount of work they’ve accomplished. Open source played a huge role in their development because they wanted to prioritize access at all turns.
“ We felt the most need was devices that may be suited for, a group of individuals or maybe a single individual, that may need some sort of customization that is too much to allow a device to be very commercially viable,” Dunham said. “ We saw the opportunity with 3D printing to kind of be one of the last ways to bridge that gap. A lot of people aren't necessarily gonna spend time making [these devices] because there is no profit in it.”
But the group wants to be clear that what they are doing isn’t necessarily radical.
“ We're not the only ones that can do this. I think it's just finding people that care enough to do it and can afford the time or find a way to get paid for it,” Dunham noted. “ We aren't the only ones that can do this.”
MakeGood is even in the process of making their most requested device, the Toddler Mobility Trainers, be a fully 3D printed project to remove the difficulty of securing a CNC machine for the current wood structure.
“ The prototypes that we've just been working on and posted online are basically a hundred percent 3D printed. The wheels are 3D printed, the seats 3D printed. The straps and buckles are 3D printed,” Platt said. “Everything on it is basically 3D printed and it makes it so if you have a 3D printer and spools of filament, you can make this chair and you don't have to have any special skills beyond being able to send something to your 3D printer.”
The open healthware movement has deep ties in 3D printing, and it’s one of the simplest tools to utilize for product development which means it’s incredibly effective. Pieces can be modified or tailored to individual needs with minimum cost in development. Being able to produce a lot of a necessary device is invaluable, and deeply important to the creation of an open healthware certification process.
“ We want it to be out there so people can take it, maybe take an element of the idea and use it in a different way or change it just in any way possible,” Dunham noted. “I think that's how these sort of designs will evolve going forward and just by putting it out there, you're giving it the opportunity to evolve in the future.”
