Coffee with a Founder: Psyonic
Coffee with a Founder: Aadeel Akhtar of Psyonic
In our second session of Coffee with a Founder, we sat down for a virtual cup of coffee with Dr. Aadeel Akhtar, CEO and Founder of Psyonic, to discuss modern prosthetics, his entrepreneurial journey, and his big mission: to create a product that makes the world more accessible for people with limb differences, then make that product more affordable through novel, high-quality manufacturing.
Aadeel’s enthusiasm for biotech is contagious. As the founder and CEO of Psyonic, he’s merged his passions for medicine and engineering to create cutting-edge bionic prosthetic hands. Aadeel comes from a strong engineering background but unlike many engineers, he’s also a showman. If you give him 10 minutes, he can almost convince you that you’d benefit from a bionic hand, even if both of your own hands are in working condition.
Though he started Psyonic in 2015, Aadeel’s interest in prosthetics began early in life. At age 7 he visited his parent’s hometown in Pakistan where he encountered a girl his age who was missing her leg and using a tree branch as a crutch. It was the first time he saw someone with a limb difference and the moment sparked something big in his young brain.
“We had the same ethnic heritage but such vastly different qualities of life. This was due to lack of healthcare and financial security,” he recalls of this early realization.
It was a formative experience for Aadeel and he’s been working non-stop since, with that moment in mind.
With a BS in biology; master’s degrees in computer science and electrical and computer engineering; and a Ph.D. in neuroscience, Aadeel is uniquely qualified to build futuristic prosthetics. Psyonic’s first product, the Ability Hand, merges his deep knowledge of both robotics and medicine.
The Problem
The human hand is a complex feat of engineering – it’s reactive enough to wrangle squirming toddlers, sturdy enough to take the impact of kickboxing, agile enough to pluck guitar strings. To successfully mimic the hand’s function, a robotic hand needs to be speedy and durable.
Major advancements in prosthetics have made daily life more accessible for people with limb differentiation, however, most prosthetic hands do not offer the range of motion, response, or durability that a human hand offers. Those that come close are prohibitively expensive, often costing more than $50,000.
Many advanced prosthetics allow users to pick up items, a process that relies on a planned action. The user’s hand will make contact with a glass of juice, wrap the prosthetic fingers around the glass, and then lift it to drink. But these prosthetics can’t keep up with reactive motions. Activities like catching a ball, adjusting in the moment as groceries fall out of a bag, grasping tighter to a glass if it starts to slip, require a much faster response. Most prosthetics on the market are simply too slow to effectively accomplish reactive movements.
One of the biggest complaints for prosthetists and patients is that robotic prosthetics aren’t durable enough for daily life. Multi-articulated hands – prosthetics in which all five fingers move – can cost $25K-$50K and often break within months. These prosthetic companies use expensive injection molded parts and machined steel, but the hands still break because the fingers are too rigid. 3D-printing can lower the cost, but the materials are too fragile.
“If we give people a 3D-printed hand they’re going to break it within a day. We needed to make something that was super robust but also leveraging low-cost materials,” Aadeel notes.
Psyonic’s Solution
Psyonic took a different approach than other companies on the market. Following customer feedback gained, Aadeel’s team worked to make the Ability Hand lightweight, water-resistant, and importantly, durable.
“Instead of using 3D-printing to make the actual pieces of the hand, we use it to make molds for casting low-cost silicone that’s more akin to what we have in our biological hands, and it has flexibility in it. It survives impact.”
It’s also the first multi-articulated hand to give users a sense of touch, enabling them to feel the objects they touch through sensors on multiple fingers.
As for the price tag, the Ability Hand is poised to be the most affordable multi-articulated hand on the market. In fact, the Ability Hand is covered by Medicare, expanding access to multi-articulated hands from 10% of the market to 75%. Aadeel’s goal is for the Ability Hand to make daily life more accessible for users, and for the price tag to make prosthetics a more accessible tool for all patients.
Next Steps
Psyonic’s Ability Hand is currently available in a regional market, with a national launch planned for 2021. In the meantime, Aadeel, Psyonic, and the Ability Hand are getting a good bit of attention and positive feedback. They’ve earned SBIR funding, the Illinois Innovation Prize, Forbes 30-Under-30 recognition, and on October 13 they won the Fourth Revolution Product of the Year Award.
Though the awards are fantastic, Aadeel’s favorite part about building Psyonic is the Ability Hand’s impact. He revels in the fact that the Ability Hand not only brings back day-to-day activities for users who have lost a hand but also can do more than a standard human hand.
“My favorite part of building Psyonic is definitely the impact that it has had on our patients’ lives. We just fit one of our Ability Hands on a patient last week. He’s a 65-year old man who was born without his left hand. And he was telling me about the struggles he went through in his life – people thinking he couldn’t do anything because he didn’t have a hand. And now when he wears our bionic hand, he feels powerful,” Aadeel notes.
“It completely changed the narrative for our patients. Losing a hand is not something to be pitied. Having a bionic hand makes you superhuman.”