New-zealand Certification Medical Device

Paraplegic's full time job: Testing a custom-made exoskeleton

Austin Whitney graduated from the University of Berkeley last month, and he is already employed full time. Whitney works as a lab rat to man.

The 22 year old paraplegic, who made headlines recently when he crossed the stage to its entry into force on bionic legs, now spends long days with the engineers who developed the tailored suit robotics. He believes passionately in the device and its potential to change the lives of people with spinal cord injury, and he wants to do everything he can to help develop the prototype for himself and others like him .

“We want to make the Model T version of an exoskeleton,” Whitney said. “There are health benefits to mobility. It’s good for the circulatory and muscular systems, and there’s a social and mental benefit. Four years ago, I thought I was going to die on a hospital bed.”

That was 2007, when Whitney was 18 years old and got into a  car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

“The spinal cord injury meant I would likely never walk again,” he said. But he did, taking his first public steps in four years at a graduation ceremony at Edwards Track Stadium on May 7.

During the nine months prior, however, he had experimented with walking in a custom-fit robotic device developed on campus in the lab of mechanical engineering professor  Professor Homayoon Kazerooni , who is also founder of Berkeley Bionics. That company makes the  eLegs robotic exoskeleton, which is currently undergoing trials and is expected to become available to rehabilitation centers by the end of the year, with a personal version for sale for an as-yet-undisclosed price in 2013.

A friend who plays wheelchair basketball with Whitney told him about Kazerooni, one of a number of innovators around the world devoted to developing robotic exoskeletons for wheelchair users. After speaking with him on the phone, Whitney decided to visit the Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory. “It is like something out of a movie set–exoskeletons hanging from the walls everywhere,” he said.

It’s inside that lab where Whitney does most of his walking these days, though he does on occasion roam the campus in his bionic suit. He has degrees in history and political science, and plans to attend law school in the fall of 2012. But for now, he spends about six hours a day, from noon to 6 p.m., working (for pay) in the lab.

APR - Music

(PRWEB) September 25, 2004

Diclofenac Potassium 25 mg film-coated tablets, recently approved by MEDSAFE in New Zealand as OTC medication, have been launched in New Zealand by Douglas Pharmaceuticals Ltd., under the license of APR.

Diclofenac Potassium 25 mg film-coated tablets are an immediate release formulation which has been patented and developed by APR Applied Pharma Research SA, the Swiss based R&D Company.

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