MEDICAL MARVELS

An Affordable Bionic Hand

WHEN AADEEL AKHTAR was 7 years old, he met a little girl who changed his life. His parents took him to see family in Pakistan, where they’d been born, and they were walking into a store when he saw her. She was missing her right leg. “That was actually the first time I had met someone with a limb difference,” he says. “She was about my age, using a tree branch as a crutch, living in poverty.”

He never learned her name, never spoke to her or saw her again. But he never forgot her. He got a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and now, at 34, is founder and head of an Illinois company called Psyonic. He and his team of about 30 make prosthetic limbs that are smart, durable, responsive to their users’ needs and—this is key—affordable. In the U.S., Medicare says it will cover the cost of Psyonic’s prosthetics, and Akhtar says other insurers will probably follow. It’s estimated that at least 1.6 million Americans live with the loss of a limb, and Akhtar says only 10 percent of those who needed bionic limbs in the past could afford them. Medicare’s approval should ultimately increase that to 75 percent.

“We’re pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, but also making them accessible and leveling the playing field for all those people who couldn’t get access to this kind of technology before,” Akhtar says.