The PREMIER team is currently investigating and attempting to solve the current issues that are present with todays prosthetic devices and the method in which an amputee receives their prosthesis. In order to achieve this, research is being done on two fronts:
| 1 | One front is research into Above The Knee Prosthetic Device itself |
The Prosthesis
The PREMIER Team is on its way to developing a low-cost above the knee prosthesis that is smart, modular and emotionally pleasing. To accomplish this, a detailed analysis of the problems faced by those involved in receiving or prescribing a prosthesis, was performed. With these design requirements, the team is moving forward into synthesizing its first iteration of prosthetic solutions.
| 2 | The other is into creating a Product Service System that will aide the amputees and the relevant stakeholders in the process of prescribing and receiving a prosthesis |
ProLiSS
The research being done by the PREMIER Team is directed towards creating a Product Service System called the Prosthetic Life-Cycle Service System (ProLiSS). Unlike other product service systems, ProLiSS is designed to explicitly involve and thus serve the amputee in the different product life phases. This in itself has an impact into how a prosthetic device needs to be designed to ensure a smoother interaction between the amputee and the device during different phases of the prosthetic’s life.
The PREMIER project will perform research aimed at developing a smart, modular and emotionally pleasing above the knee prosthesis (AKP) to be offered as a low cost ‘Product-Service System (PSS)’. The concept of exploiting the PSS model is that it will enable a AKP to be developed for specific patients faster, should enable the realization costs to be lower and will also allow the service-provider to smartly capture data from the AKP that can help it improve the service it offers. The novelty of the project is that it will result in an original AKP that whilst being able to provide the user with sufficient degrees of freedom at both the ankle and knee, for daily tasks, it will be customised to patient needs, relatively cheap to acquire via a PSS and also emotionally pleasing.
CONCURRENT ENGINEERING RESEARCH UNIT (CERU)
The PREMIER Project is one of the research projects administered by the Concurrent Engineering Research Unit (CERU) located within the Engineering Faculty at the University of Malta. It is funded through ERDF.01.124 TRAKE