Innovative adjustable sockets stand to revolutionize prosthetics, promoting comfort and user satisfaction for amputees. Sydney Robinson shares her journey in creating Vessl Prosthetics, emphasizing design iterations, user feedback, and strategic positioning within the market that enable transformative solutions in limb care.
• Introduction to Vessl and its mission to revolutionize prosthetic sockets • Sydney Robinson's engineering background and entry into prosthetics • The key problems with traditional prosthetics and the need for adjustability • Mechanical solution for adaptive sockets without electronics • Feedback loops from users and prosthetists for iterative design improvement • The roadmap for product launch and future plans in the market • Discussion on market consolidation versus independent practices • Importance of collaboration between engineers and clinicians in prosthetic design
Special thanks to Advanced 3D for sponsoring this episode.
00:00:09.480 --> 00:00:10.644 You're just really quiet.
00:00:10.644 --> 00:00:11.448 I will pay attention.
00:00:11.740 --> 00:00:12.884 I'll turn myself up a little bit.
00:00:12.884 --> 00:00:13.387 How's that?
00:00:13.387 --> 00:00:15.525 Oh, that actually yeah, that helps.
00:00:15.605 --> 00:00:16.367 What about you, sydney?
00:00:16.367 --> 00:00:17.199 You talk Maybe.
00:00:17.199 --> 00:00:17.981 How am I doing?
00:00:19.161 --> 00:00:22.603 Okay, we're in a good spot, all right, so we are recording.
00:00:22.603 --> 00:00:25.346 Let me make sure that I've got Sydney.
00:00:25.346 --> 00:00:26.687 We got 6%.
00:00:26.687 --> 00:00:27.966 Katie's at 89.
00:00:27.966 --> 00:00:29.027 I'm at 90.
00:00:29.027 --> 00:00:32.750 There you are, you're climbing now Sydney, perfect, all right.
00:00:32.750 --> 00:00:34.731 So we're going to go off video here.
00:00:35.012 --> 00:00:38.234 Brent, it definitely makes a difference when your mouth is closer.
00:00:38.895 --> 00:00:40.615 Okay, I will eat my microphone.
00:00:40.615 --> 00:00:51.866 All right, we ready, you ready, katie, yep, all right, hey y'all, welcome to another episode of the Prosthetics and Orthotics podcast.
00:00:51.866 --> 00:00:57.383 Yoris is actually traveling, and he gets to travel all over Europe.
00:00:57.383 --> 00:01:00.651 It's apparently very inexpensive to do so.
00:01:00.651 --> 00:01:06.152 A little jealous, so some well-deserved time off, and he's got a lot of travel coming up.
00:01:06.152 --> 00:01:11.108 But I've got my trusty sidekick, katie Richmond, with me today.
00:01:11.108 --> 00:01:12.412 So hi, katie.
00:01:13.313 --> 00:01:13.713 Hey there.
00:01:14.561 --> 00:01:15.603 Happy New Year to you.
00:01:15.603 --> 00:01:16.989 To you as well.
00:01:16.989 --> 00:01:20.088 So you're kind of buried in snow, I hear.
00:01:20.700 --> 00:01:23.971 Yeah, about, I'd say about 11 inches.
00:01:24.581 --> 00:01:26.507 So nothing overnight, huh, just cold.
00:01:26.989 --> 00:01:35.129 No, this was all yesterday and hey, it's all good, my street isn't plowed, but the major ones are.
00:01:35.129 --> 00:01:38.947 And no, just enjoying this winter wonderland.
00:01:40.191 --> 00:01:47.713 I hear you Well and we're also talking like you have been with Advanced 3D for almost a year now.
00:01:48.361 --> 00:01:50.760 I know it's crazy, it's crazy, yeah.
00:01:51.340 --> 00:01:58.804 So can you just take us through some of the projects that have been memorable and then kind of what you're looking forward to for 2025?
00:01:58.823 --> 00:02:20.992 I feel like everything has been memorable but some of the most fun and impactful devices that I don't know how I would have done it or that's a lie, I would have done it traditionally, but how I could have even been helpful from where I am is Katie Leatherwood in Latvia.
00:02:20.992 --> 00:02:43.445 She is a wonderful prosthetist and working on a hip disarticulation socket with her, knowing the pain of what it is to lift a plaster, even with vermiculite in it, mold up onto your bench and carve out your mods.
00:02:43.445 --> 00:02:44.229 The pain of going through that.
00:02:44.229 --> 00:02:44.491 I know that.
00:02:44.491 --> 00:02:57.680 And instead, on the other side of the globe, she sent me an email I worked on something, sent it back to her, she had it printed locally and the patient is in it and not once did I have to strain my back and lift up 90 pounds.
00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:06.212 The other would be in California working out of Salinas Valley and doing some partial hand prostheses.
00:03:06.212 --> 00:03:28.507 That the ability to iterate quickly and provide some static, low cost, functional devices for people who, because of insurance reasons Medicare and Medicaid coding issues they wouldn't be able to have anything, and to be able to quickly go back and forth across the entire country, iterating with the prosthetists on site.
00:03:28.507 --> 00:03:35.587 It makes the world feel pretty small compared to how it did before I joined Advance 3D.
00:03:36.770 --> 00:03:38.453 Yeah, and I'd just like to echo that.
00:03:38.453 --> 00:03:46.574 I mean, I think one of the neatest things, and especially with Bamboo Labs printers being so accessible with the Bamboo Mini.
00:03:46.574 --> 00:03:49.780 I'm guessing it's still on sale for $179.
00:03:49.780 --> 00:04:00.094 But going to like the A1, which is roughly $400, you get a little bit more build volume to the one that you have, which is the what is it the X1 Carbon?
00:04:00.360 --> 00:04:01.021 X1 Carbon.
00:04:01.021 --> 00:04:11.729 But it's been nice because these prosthetists have been able to leverage our design experience your design experience and then print on site.
00:04:11.729 --> 00:04:23.927 So there's literally no shipping and we're able to get through this iterative process really quick on something that's super detailed, and I think that's super exciting and I really see that as a trend for 2025.
00:04:23.927 --> 00:04:28.307 I've been working with a couple clinics that have now 3D printers in their offices.
00:04:28.307 --> 00:04:30.411 We're helping with the design side of things.
00:04:30.411 --> 00:04:37.360 We send them files and then, when they're ready to go to a definitive socket, we're there to help them out on that journey as well.
00:04:37.360 --> 00:04:49.029 So I'm really excited about 2025 for that and being able to help those clinicians, some manufacturers, that sort of thing, on the design side of things.
00:04:49.029 --> 00:04:50.430 So I'm excited.
00:04:50.430 --> 00:04:52.112 So what are you excited for for 2025?
00:04:52.351 --> 00:04:54.293 Lots of things adjustable sockets.
00:04:55.233 --> 00:04:56.694 Huh, Fancy that.
00:04:56.694 --> 00:04:59.197 I think we we might have something to say about that today.
00:05:01.180 --> 00:05:01.500 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:05:01.500 --> 00:05:22.375 Yeah, I'm having the code has been around for some months now, but just building up that knowledge and more practitioners feeling comfortable using it, making sure that there are, as much as we can, 3d devices to assist those mechanical devices.
00:05:22.375 --> 00:05:26.389 Yes, it is very relevant to today's topic.
00:05:26.389 --> 00:05:30.511 Don't want to spoil it, but then again it's a podcast, so you probably read the title.
00:05:30.759 --> 00:05:47.928 Yeah, so I want to introduce our podcast guest today, and that is Sydney Robinson, with Vessel Prosthetics, and they are developing something that is a user-centric, adjustable socket and, yeah, I'm really excited to hear the story.
00:05:47.928 --> 00:05:50.307 I've heard bits and pieces.
00:05:50.307 --> 00:05:55.279 We met Sydney at Aopa, and so I'm really excited to have her on board.
00:05:55.279 --> 00:06:23.374 One of the neat things that what I see in her is she has chosen to be a part of the orthotic and prosthetic field industry, so to speak, but she's not a clinician, and that is great, and so one of the things that I always love is when people use their gifts and talents to help people, and not necessarily from a clinical side, but it really does scale in a big way.
00:06:23.374 --> 00:06:26.343 So I'm excited to have you here, sydney.
00:06:26.343 --> 00:06:27.305 Welcome to the show.
00:06:28.007 --> 00:06:28.908 Thank you so much, Brent.
00:06:28.908 --> 00:06:31.442 I'm really excited to be here and really appreciate you having me on.
00:06:32.365 --> 00:06:38.322 Yeah, so we always ask how did you get started in orthotics and prosthetics?
00:06:38.322 --> 00:06:43.740 But you can also take us through your school journey and your engineering journey as well.
00:06:45.886 --> 00:06:50.684 As you identified, I'm a bit of an outsider when it comes to prosthetics, so I came at it.
00:06:50.684 --> 00:06:59.449 I was doing engineering as my undergraduate degree in Canada and I was doing mechanical engineering but really my heart was in the biomedical field.
00:06:59.449 --> 00:07:10.000 I've always been really fascinated with how the human body moves and how it works and I've just really loved all of that, both the problem solving aspects of that but also just seeing it all come together.
00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:17.105 And that was my first foray into prosthetics was for my capstone project in my fourth year of my undergraduate degree.
00:07:17.105 --> 00:07:34.781 We were working on an ankle foot orthosis for a little girl and she wanted to go in and out of the water quickly but she was really struggling because with her AFO she had to use like thick wool socks and it was really annoying to go back and forth in the water, out of the water, trying to take all of her gear on and off every time.
00:07:34.781 --> 00:07:38.531 And at five years old, her friends weren't exactly waiting around for her to get all set up.
00:07:38.839 --> 00:07:44.612 That was my first experience with the problem solving aspects and design aspects of prosthetics.
00:07:44.612 --> 00:07:55.812 With the problem-solving aspects and design aspects of prosthetics, I didn't want to be a clinician myself ultimately, but I did really want to stay in the field and in medical devices in general and stay more on that device design aspect of it.
00:07:55.812 --> 00:08:16.649 So I did my master's in biomedical engineering and I got the opportunity to do a program it's in Canada, but it's modeled after Stanford's biodesign which basically brings engineers, phd scientists and doctors together to innovate within medicine, with a real focus on teaching us about entrepreneurship and what it's like to start a company.
00:08:16.649 --> 00:08:25.305 It was something that I was interested in for a long time but didn't really know what it took to start a company, which is why this program was so interesting to me.
00:08:25.305 --> 00:08:39.490 So right off the bat in that program they let you kind of go out into the world and experience or find a problem, interview a bunch of different clinicians and then choose which problem you would like to solve and that you'd really like to make a business out of.
00:08:39.720 --> 00:09:10.011 And so when we were interviewing clinicians from cardiovascular surgeons to neurologists to physiotherapists and everybody in between we shadowed a doctor at a diabetes clinic, and what I didn't know at the time was that diabetes is the leading cause of leg amputation, and so we met a lot of patients there that all struggled with how their leg was fitting inside of their prosthesis, and this is a very obvious problem to people who are in the field or who have lived experience with prostheses.
00:09:10.011 --> 00:09:21.788 But it was totally new to us in doing the program and I was just struck with how debilitating it is when your limb is changing size, which you know.
00:09:21.788 --> 00:09:40.370 There's things you can do to maybe mitigate some of that, but it's really out of your control and the prosthesis isn't changing size and just that misfit seemed to be to be very frustrating both for the patient and the prosthetist, and so that really got the gears turning in mine and my co-founder's heads as we were kind of thinking about this.
00:09:40.370 --> 00:09:50.133 Throughout the fellowship program we spent a lot of time interviewing prosthetists and interviewing people with leg amputations and limb difference and learning.
00:09:50.513 --> 00:09:57.793 You know what does a day in the life look like, what are some of the considerations when you're developing prosthetic legs or designing sockets and things like that.
00:09:57.793 --> 00:10:04.693 And at the end of the day, what we noticed was it would be really nice if you had a socket that could adjust its volume.
00:10:04.693 --> 00:10:18.244 It would be really nice if you had a socket that could adjust its volume and it would be really nice if that adjustment happened automatically, because then people don't have to worry about engaging with the prosthesis and you circumvent a lot of the frustration both on the amputee side but also on the prosthetist side.
00:10:18.244 --> 00:10:20.870 So that was how Vessel was born.
00:10:22.682 --> 00:10:29.668 Wow, that's a neat kind of evolution, I would say, of that Now when you were doing your research.
00:10:29.668 --> 00:10:33.461 How does all that kind of tie into the program that you were at?
00:10:33.461 --> 00:10:43.628 Is it not only kind of first-person research with the patients and the clinicians but also, I'm guessing, some historical literature reviews and that sort of thing?
00:10:44.249 --> 00:10:44.710 Absolutely.
00:10:44.710 --> 00:10:46.754 Yeah, we really dove into the literature.
00:10:46.754 --> 00:11:06.366 So when I was doing my master's program, I was doing research on wrist implants and there is a ton of data on hip implants, knee implants, wrist implants, and there's not very much data, as I'm sure you folks have noticed, on prosthesis use and different studies that have been done on prosthesis users.
00:11:06.366 --> 00:11:17.865 It's just, you know, the studies tend to be smaller or shorter term and so we were learning as much as we could from kind of literature review and then as much as we could from, as you're saying, like the first person interviews.
00:11:17.865 --> 00:11:21.163 That was really, I would say, where we got a lot of our understanding from.
00:11:21.283 --> 00:11:24.648 So I'm just curious, like from a history side of things.
00:11:24.648 --> 00:11:34.585 You know there's a lot of not a lot, but some historical stuff around, not necessarily adjustability, but flexibility.
00:11:34.585 --> 00:11:42.381 Was there anything that kind of stood out Like I can't believe they did it that way, or any of those kinds of stories from the historical perspective?
00:11:43.465 --> 00:12:04.203 Yeah, yeah, I would say yes and I would say that I mean, first it really struck us that that socks were what right, like with the you know, ai in the world and this and that and all this like high tech, high tech, high tech that it was it's sock management that it really came down to and I think for us and honestly it works really well for lots of patients, so super happy about that.
00:12:04.203 --> 00:12:12.056 From our perspective, it was interesting that the solution was a quote, unquote, a low tech solution.
00:12:12.056 --> 00:12:13.523 And why was that?
00:12:13.523 --> 00:12:28.081 And, exactly as you said, brent, as we dove into the literature, we're not the first person that's ever tried to solve this problem and it is such a multifaceted issue that you can see why things worked or didn't work out.
00:12:28.081 --> 00:12:29.065 It may be in the past.
00:12:29.144 --> 00:12:38.033 So you know, we looked at, like the bladders that people have used in the past and still continue to use, right, whether they're air filled or water filled, gel filled, like what did that look like and how is that working?
00:12:38.033 --> 00:12:42.912 And then there's some like cable based and ratchet based systems, both historically and on the market.
00:12:42.912 --> 00:12:46.222 So what are the benefits and pitfalls of some of those designs?
00:12:46.222 --> 00:13:08.720 So really, just tried to look at as many different ways of managing, as you were describing either the flexibility of a prosthesis, a prosthetic socket, or the adjustability therein, and we had some pretty outlandish like what if we could make a Chinese finger trap version but for the socket that's like interwoven, and just all kinds of different ideas that we were whiteboarding at the beginning.
00:13:08.720 --> 00:13:21.216 But I think we've come up with something that's pretty elegant and still low tech enough to be widely accessible and user friendly, but high tech enough that it provides that mental burden relief, if you will.
00:13:22.399 --> 00:13:26.110 Yeah, so can you take us through a little bit of that journey?
00:13:26.110 --> 00:13:37.221 You know we've got I think one of the things that stands out to me the most of our field is we've got a bunch of creative people in our field, so not only the fabrication side of things, but some people have an idea.
00:13:37.221 --> 00:13:38.946 They've been sitting on something for a while.
00:13:38.946 --> 00:13:41.351 Can you take us through some of that?
00:13:41.351 --> 00:13:43.705 You know, how did you actually come up?
00:13:43.705 --> 00:13:48.225 Just process wise, what were the steps?
00:13:48.225 --> 00:13:54.751 Because I mean, from what I could tell this journey kind of our vessel was born in 2022.
00:13:55.413 --> 00:13:55.594 Yes.
00:13:56.600 --> 00:14:01.967 So you know, we're going on three years into this Probably feels like a lot longer than that.
00:14:01.967 --> 00:14:04.741 Probably feels like a lot longer than that, you know.
00:14:04.741 --> 00:14:12.807 So I think part of the things that I would love to convey to our audience is you know, it is a process, right, this stuff doesn't happen overnight.
00:14:12.807 --> 00:14:15.749 It takes a long time and you got to stick with it.
00:14:15.749 --> 00:14:22.394 There's probably nights that you, or days or periods of time that you're like why am I even doing this?
00:14:22.394 --> 00:14:26.962 But At least that's what I have sometimes.
00:14:26.962 --> 00:14:38.365 Yeah, can you just take our listeners through kind of that journey of how you found, because you had a problem to solve, right, and then what were the steps to take to solve that?
00:14:38.365 --> 00:14:39.735 And then how do you land the plane?
00:14:39.735 --> 00:14:47.469 I think that's the other part is, people get a lot of the way there and then they don't realize that last percentage is really difficult to get.
00:14:47.469 --> 00:14:49.421 At what point do you say we're shipping?
00:14:50.082 --> 00:14:53.845 Yeah, yeah, there are so, so many things that I want to dive into there.
00:14:53.845 --> 00:15:02.524 I would start with saying we're still trying to land the plane, so I'll let you know when we touch ground, but certainly we're in the landing the plane phase, if you will.
00:15:02.524 --> 00:15:06.500 And absolutely it has been a process Like you should have seen.
00:15:06.500 --> 00:15:17.418 It is not embarrassing because you had to start somewhere, but fairly embarrassing Like the first few designs that we had that we thought were were going to be viable.
00:15:17.418 --> 00:15:19.604 I would say that there were.
00:15:19.604 --> 00:15:21.388 So, yes, it's definitely a process.
00:15:21.388 --> 00:15:22.636 There's a ton of steps involved.
00:15:22.937 --> 00:15:29.932 The nice thing about doing a structured program was that we were taught a lot of that in a very systematic way.
00:15:29.932 --> 00:15:51.767 So we were taught how to interview clinicians and patients, how to narrow down that list of problems Like we had a list of over 200 problems that we could have built into businesses, but really, looking at you know how severe is the problem, how common is the problem Questions like that so learned a lot about the business and what makes a good business.
00:15:51.767 --> 00:15:56.565 Learned a lot about the patenting side, how to protect your innovation, so there's a lot of different.
00:15:56.565 --> 00:16:07.846 There's, like regulatory standards that need to be considered, so there's a lot of just elements to a business that you don't necessarily think about when you're just trying to solve a problem with a design.
00:16:07.846 --> 00:16:14.618 So I would say that that's a difference.
00:16:14.618 --> 00:16:31.585 You know, if anyone out there is interested, if they've got an idea, the question I would pose is do you want to create a business from that idea or do you want to maybe partner with people whether that's a design firm or young innovators or whomever it might be that are interested in developing the idea and you just really want to make sure that that idea gets to market?
00:16:31.585 --> 00:16:43.148 So there's a little bit of a crux there For us, because we were coming at it without a prosthetics background, so no one on our team was a prosthetist or had lived experience with amputation or limb difference.
00:16:43.349 --> 00:16:44.875 We really needed to educate ourselves.
00:16:44.875 --> 00:17:02.220 So I would say, for anyone it's really important to understand the problem, but for us we had to understand it and spend that much more time understanding it, because you folks have a very challenging job being prosthetists and there's a lot of nuance to what you folks learned in school that we hadn't learned yet.
00:17:02.220 --> 00:17:07.278 I would say a lot of our time, especially during the fellowship program, but honestly, I'm still learning a lot.
00:17:07.278 --> 00:17:26.678 We spent a lot of that time interviewing prosthetists, interviewing amputees, learning as much as we could, and we wanted to get a solid understanding of what is the day in the life like for a patient, what is the day in the life like for a prosthetist and what are the processes that are in place that our device would need to fit into.
00:17:26.678 --> 00:17:29.686 We didn't want to rock the boat on the workflow side of things.
00:17:29.686 --> 00:17:36.443 We wanted to rock the boat on the innovation and like the benefits to the patient and to the prosthetist side of things.
00:17:36.443 --> 00:17:38.663 So a lot of education that way.
00:17:39.075 --> 00:17:40.079 And then it came to.
00:17:40.079 --> 00:17:42.864 I mean, you have to have an idea at some point.
00:17:42.864 --> 00:17:55.346 So once we felt as though we had understood the problem enough to start generating ideas, then it was generating as many ideas as you can, figuring out what makes those ideas realistic.
00:17:55.346 --> 00:17:57.031 One example is weight.
00:17:57.031 --> 00:18:11.442 Weight is extremely important in the prosthetics industry because it's something that is attached to your limb, and that was one of our driving forces in the design was just making sure that it was something that could be worn and used in a way that was comfortable.
00:18:11.442 --> 00:18:14.817 It doesn't help if we make something that's automatically adjusting if it weighs 20 pounds.
00:18:14.817 --> 00:18:22.221 So using that as a bit of a guide and then pitching those ideas to prosthetists and saying, you know, what do you think about this?
00:18:22.221 --> 00:18:31.239 And inevitably people are saying, well, that would be extremely hard for me to build for these reasons, or it would be heavy for these reasons, or no one's going to know how to use it for these reasons.
00:18:31.679 --> 00:18:33.940 So we started to iterate, iterate, iterate.
00:18:33.940 --> 00:18:36.102 So, as you said, we're two and a half years in.
00:18:36.102 --> 00:18:57.938 First year was really developing the business side, like setting some of the foundations on the intellectual property, the regulatory understanding how the business side of prosthetics works even if we'd understood the prosthetics side of prosthetics and then refining those designs to get to something that someone can actually wear.
00:18:57.938 --> 00:19:02.528 That happened in July of last year for the first time.
00:19:02.528 --> 00:19:06.580 So you know, literally two years in before someone's even wearing it.
00:19:06.580 --> 00:19:19.758 And then now we're really focused on what are the improvements we can make since that first kind of use case to then roll it out to more people and get more feedback.
00:19:19.758 --> 00:19:31.616 Because when you're landing the plane, the more data points you have, the better you can make a product that is going to be a lot more relevant to a larger group of individuals when you have more of those data points.
00:19:31.616 --> 00:19:36.917 So that was a very long winded answer but hopefully some of that was easy to follow.
00:19:37.599 --> 00:19:39.625 No, yeah, go ahead, Katie Sorry.
00:19:40.615 --> 00:19:41.777 No, it definitely did.
00:19:41.777 --> 00:20:02.083 I will be the clinical person that maybe bogs down this podcast, but I would love to get in, if it's allowed, to the nitty gritty of you know, as a prosthetist, having worked with people, you know what I always say is it doesn't matter what I feel, because I'm not wearing it.
00:20:02.083 --> 00:20:05.258 It's what the patient feels and if they're happy, I'm happy.
00:20:05.258 --> 00:20:15.040 And so how does Vessel and this product, how does it know how much to tighten the socket and where to tighten the socket?
00:20:15.040 --> 00:20:18.548 And I'd love as much detail as you can share.
00:20:18.548 --> 00:20:26.346 Maybe we'll have to cut it out because everybody else thinks it's boring, but I'm very interested in kind of the mindset.
00:20:26.465 --> 00:20:28.617 Clinically, For sure.
00:20:28.617 --> 00:20:35.226 For sure and that's one of the things we're actually really proud of is we created a way for it to automatically adjust without it being electronic.
00:20:35.226 --> 00:20:39.965 So we find that with an electronic device you're just exponentially increasing the cost.
00:20:39.965 --> 00:20:42.181 It's not as durable, sometimes hard to manage.
00:20:42.181 --> 00:20:50.977 We're trying to think of those maybe elderly patients who might forget to charge their leg overnight Heck, I forget to charge my phone overnight sometimes.
00:20:50.977 --> 00:20:55.708 So, elderly or not, sometimes it's hard to remember to do those little tasks.
00:20:55.708 --> 00:20:58.905 So we created something that was mechanical and automatic.
00:20:59.105 --> 00:21:12.459 And what it does I don't like to use the word monitor because there's no sensors, so it's not monitoring anything per se, but think of it as two mechanical pieces that are engaging and disengaging based on tension.
00:21:12.459 --> 00:21:31.242 So there's tension in a cable, a cable that runs through panels on the socket, similar to other paneled sockets that exist, and that cable runs through what we're calling isoform, this like isoform mechanical disc, and that disc sits distal to the socket and it uses shock absorption.
00:21:31.242 --> 00:21:41.759 So every step that someone's taking, or even just like weight that they're shifting around as they're standing, and it uses that shock absorption to automatically pull on the cable and tighten the panels against the leg.
00:21:41.759 --> 00:21:46.699 But, as you said, katie, to a set tension, right, we don't want to over tighten on the leg, that's dangerous.
00:21:46.699 --> 00:21:53.481 Prosthetist will be able to, on the distal face of this isoform disc, turn.
00:21:53.481 --> 00:21:59.819 I won't say turn or crank, but like, use a screwdriver and basically tighten or loosen this little piece.
00:22:00.601 --> 00:22:07.361 And if you tighten it then the panels will want to sit more snug against the leg.
00:22:07.361 --> 00:22:11.497 If you loosen it, they'll want to sit a little bit less snug against the leg.
00:22:11.497 --> 00:22:17.401 So each patient might like, like I might like my running shoes tied up more tightly than Katie likes her running shoes tied up.
00:22:17.401 --> 00:22:22.744 And the same kind of thing with people with prostheses, if you want it to fit a little bit more snug or a little bit less snug.
00:22:22.744 --> 00:22:32.642 And then the system will always try and maintain that level of tension in the cable, just based on how the internal mechanisms are engaging and disengaging.
00:22:32.642 --> 00:22:37.884 So once it reaches the tension level, internal mechanics are basically pulled apart.
00:22:37.884 --> 00:22:41.737 They can't connect anymore, they can't tighten any further.
00:22:41.737 --> 00:22:50.645 But once that pressure drops so someone loses volume, then those inner mechanics are able to re-engage and tighten the system again.
00:22:50.855 --> 00:22:53.663 Yes, no, that's definitely making sense.
00:22:53.663 --> 00:22:55.630 How about releasing the panels?
00:22:55.630 --> 00:23:21.663 Because I have quite a few patients who just the reason they're in adjustable sockets not only for volume loss, but could be that some anatomy if you get it snug enough to where they like it you're going to need to release that tension before they can remove the prosthesis 100%, Absolutely, and so what we've got right now is it's a manual button, so it is.
00:23:21.962 --> 00:23:24.707 it's an automatic constriction but a manual release.
00:23:24.707 --> 00:23:30.957 So, as you said, Katie, to take the device off at the end of the day, but also like if you're in an airplane.
00:23:30.957 --> 00:23:54.848 I was talking to someone and he finds he has to drive to work I think he said an hour each way and even just sitting and having for like an hour, his leg will swell and so having it be releasable, if you will, so you can hit the release button when you get in the car and then if the leg swells as you're driving, it's just pushing up against those panels and widening them, kind of as it needs to Airplane I mentioned.
00:23:54.848 --> 00:24:08.828 But then also, if you're going to sit down for a movie for a couple hours or a meal for a couple of hours and you know your leg might swell a bit or you just want to release the tension, you can hit that manual release button and then standing back up, up and continuing to move re-engages the system and it'll tighten if it needs to.
00:24:09.088 --> 00:24:18.012 So you mentioned that you've got a couple patients on this and I saw I forget his name now, but has been in one.
00:24:18.012 --> 00:24:19.441 How do you go through?
00:24:19.441 --> 00:24:26.261 So like, once you create a device, there's got to be some sort of feedback loop and that sort of thing to iterate.
00:24:26.261 --> 00:24:30.846 So I'm kind of curious, like okay, so what was the feedback?
00:24:30.846 --> 00:24:34.184 And then what does that tell your team where you need to go?
00:24:35.055 --> 00:24:37.058 Yeah, that has been quite the journey.
00:24:37.058 --> 00:24:46.519 So we started working with Trace Wright in April, I believe, of 2024.
00:24:46.519 --> 00:24:51.615 Already freaking me out with the change in the years, I'm like trying to remember the years.
00:24:51.615 --> 00:24:53.478 So April 2024.
00:24:53.478 --> 00:25:03.141 And he brought in Stevie Crawford, who is a US Navy veteran and is training for the 2026 Paralympics for snowboarding.
00:25:03.141 --> 00:25:13.505 So he is a highly active patient and what was nice there is he's going to be very hard on a device and so if it's going to fail, he will make sure it does in one way or another.
00:25:13.704 --> 00:25:15.376 We've been working with them Again.
00:25:15.376 --> 00:25:22.221 Stevie tried it on for the first time in July and so what we've been doing so far are like what I would call touch point tests.
00:25:22.221 --> 00:25:46.037 So Stevie comes in, he meets with Trace Trace has been the one who's been fabricating the sockets and attaching isoform and then Stevie will try it on and we'll give some feedback, walk around a little bit, we'll make some adjustments as needed, kind of talk it through, come up with a list of things we need to change, and then we will change those kind of key points and ship it back out again for him to try on a second time.
00:25:46.037 --> 00:25:52.327 You'll hear me say ship out, because we are in physically different locations, so that's been interesting to work with, I would say.
00:25:52.327 --> 00:25:54.135 But Trace and Stevie have been phenomenal.
00:25:54.477 --> 00:26:02.701 The feedback on the first try was a lot of shock that it worked as well as it did, honestly, just because it hadn't been tried.
00:26:02.701 --> 00:26:12.222 We'd been working with it on bench top testing, but it was the first time it was being worn by a patient and it worked very, very well, so we were very pleased with that.
00:26:12.222 --> 00:26:15.915 The feedback from that first test was more on usability.
00:26:15.915 --> 00:26:16.898 So it was.
00:26:16.898 --> 00:26:20.145 You know we didn't have a gear ratio, for example.
00:26:20.145 --> 00:26:32.667 So what that means is that you, if you were going to manually tighten because you know the panels were super loose and you wanted to get them to touch the leg you to like turn and turn and turn and turn and turn and turn that dial, which is just annoying.
00:26:33.068 --> 00:26:35.059 So we're like, okay, we're going to need to add a gear ratio.
00:26:35.059 --> 00:26:37.838 There was a little bit of instability there was, you know.
00:26:37.838 --> 00:26:43.157 So just like different pieces of the design that needed to be iterated, and so we changed those.
00:26:43.157 --> 00:26:59.078 But you know, adding gears or adding different things will alter the weight, and so I would say that it has been a really helpful process to go back and forth with Stevie, get his feedback on the usability, the weight, the height.
00:26:59.078 --> 00:27:08.957 And we've been meeting, we meet weekly with a couple of different prosthetists to get some of those different perspectives on what the priorities need to be for the design changes that we're making.
00:27:08.957 --> 00:27:13.756 So we're working on some of those final design changes right now before we actually launch the product.
00:27:15.239 --> 00:27:19.970 Okay, so we have a product launch coming in soon.
00:27:20.029 --> 00:27:27.579 Huh, we do, we do Hopefully sooner rather than later, but certainly you know we're targeting the second half of 2025.
00:27:27.579 --> 00:27:32.423 As I mentioned, you know a few design changes needed to be made.
00:27:32.423 --> 00:27:41.672 You know some will be at AAOP and will be at AOPA and will be showing off all the latest stuff at both of those shows.
00:27:44.854 --> 00:27:50.617 I mean your journey as a CEO, and such isn't necessarily it's to be a leader, right, it's not necessarily.
00:27:50.617 --> 00:27:57.383 You need to know some of the technical stuff, but you also have to pay for this stuff, so somebody has to fundraise and things of that nature.
00:27:57.383 --> 00:28:04.667 Can you take us through just a little bit of your role within Vessel and how that's evolved over the last three years?
00:28:05.488 --> 00:28:06.328 Yeah for sure.
00:28:06.328 --> 00:28:15.944 So I would say, and to orient the listeners, we are a full-time team of three people right now and have been for the past year and a half.
00:28:15.944 --> 00:28:29.999 There's two co-founders and we have an engineer full-time, and then we also have a slew of different consultants or advisors that we're working with at any given moment and with the first year, year and a bit, my role was all well.
00:28:29.999 --> 00:28:33.286 My role going along has always been business and always will be.
00:28:33.286 --> 00:28:34.548 I think, the business focus.
00:28:34.548 --> 00:28:40.167 My co-founder is phenomenal on the design side of things, the product development side.
00:28:40.167 --> 00:28:52.012 So even though I'm the engineer on the team or on the co-founding team, he ends up really leading that and he does an absolutely fantastic job really leading that and he does an absolutely fantastic job.
