Cane has been used for making furniture, but now it is even used for making prosthetic legs. Using cane for making these prosthetic legs has made it easier for use and cost effective for patients. Rise Legs had started in late 2015 and after all the tests they currently now have 100 people who are using it comfortably and they are very happy with the product.
PG Prasad, 63, a retired bank employee who lost his right leg a few months back say “I have been using it for three months, and I am comfortable in using it. The cost of other prosthetic legs was around Rs. 80000 but this cost me Rs. 20000, which is four times less. This cane prosthetic leg is cheap and comfortable. A person needs to get comfortable with it, right now I am walking along with a stick but after some time, I will walk comfortably without any stick.”
These prosthetics legs are of low cost and are easily available with several designs.
The weight of these prosthetic legs is 2.5 kgs and patients find it comfortable to use. Arun Cherian, the founder and CEO of Rise Legs, a manufacturer company of prosthetics says that he got the idea of making prosthetic legs by using a cane, in his sister’s wedding. “I tested a lot of canes and talked with multiple cane artisans and later did testing at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. We also tested it clinically at St. John’s hospital and all went very well. Since it is an entirely new product and its lifetime is more than two years if people are gentle with it. ISO standards require a two year life. We are also engineering our leg to be over and beyond,” he says.
These varieties of prosthetic legs are starting to scale and extend this year, all this while it was given to limited number of people for the testing. Experts say that such technology will decrease the cost and make it available for everyone.
“Such innovative design will reduce the cost drastically. Two things are concerned, one is the finishing and the other is the durability and that is a concern for which you need to have a long term study to know the durability of that. Its usage in Bangalore will be different from any rural area. Once people start using it and we need to wait for five years to see how it behaves in different patterns then only there will have a real conclusion on it” says Dr. Banarji B H, orthopedic surgeon.
With time, more and more disabled people will be benefited by this technology and soon prosthetic legs will be available for disabled people in cheap cost.
