Coapt looks to bring prosthetic electrodes into the 21st century

When Jodie O’Connell was 16, she lost her right arm in a meat-grinding accident. She was given a prosthetic, but quickly came to hate it. It was a standard myoelectric system: Two electrodes, 1 attached to the biceps and 1 to the triceps. The electrodes measured signals from her muscles, which in turn activated sensors telling the prosthetic to move. She found it difficult to use, so she opted to master daily skills with a single arm.

More than 20 years later, O’Connell discovered that a few small companies were branching out from the standard myoelectric system. Suddenly, she felt the prospect of a functional arm was a possibility again. For the past year, she’s been wearing a prosthetic arm and hand that uses pattern recognition software developed by the Chicago-based engineering company, Coapt.

“It’s literally like my own hand – it’s my digital fingerprint,” O’Connell told MassDevice.com. “It gave me back things I’ve struggled with for 30 years.”

O’Connell’s experience with standard myoelectric prosthetics is not unusual, according to Coapt co-founder & CEO Blair Lock. The frustration stems from a technology that hasn’t evolved in decades, Lock told us. Before Coapt, he explained, major manufacturers of myoelectric prosthetics were “selling 1940 technology in 2016.”

In his graduate work as an electrical engineer, Lock began to integrate the concept of pattern recognition with prosthetics. Instead of using just 2 electrodes to pick up signals from the muscles, Lock’s concept involves 8 – an array that can pick up the full spectrum of what he calls “muscle music,” or the signals emitted when the brain initiates movement.

With 8 electrodes, software can get more specific feedback about what each type of movement looks like. There’s a distinct pattern of signals for each movement; more electrodes means the device can capture a more detailed pattern of movement. The researchers at Coapt devised an algorithm that quickly identifies the patterns involved with movement and becomes more specific to the user over time.

Lock was working for a research rehabilitation hospital in Chicago and noted that the research participants wanted to bring the pattern recognition software home to use with their personal prosthetics. Seeing the need for a technological upgrade to a decades-old system, he decided to fill it.

Commercializing the product was risky – the population of arm amputees is not large and Lock said it was challenging to get investors excited about a product with such a small target population. But, he told us, he felt an obligation to get the technology to market.

In 2007, Lock and 3 other researchers founded the company and started networking with prosthetics manufacturers to get their product to patients. In March, the company licensed the exclusive rights to Purdue Research Foundation’s implantable electrodes, which can read electrical signals more clearly than electrodes on the skin. Today Coapt works with 5 major prosthetic manufacturers: Motion Control, Touch Bionics, Steeper, Ottobock and College Park Technology.

O’Connell says her prosthetic feels like her natural arm and hand. Things that she’s spent years doing with 1 hand, such as tying her shoes or horseback riding, she now intuitively does with 2 hands. “The versatility [of the system] makes life so much easier,” said O’Connell.

Like her, most amputees lose their upper limbs due to a traumatic accident. Glen Lehman’s happened in 2008, while he was on a combat tour in Iraq. His was the last vehicle in a 4-truck convoy when a grenade came through the door next to him. It blew off his right arm, shattered his left forearm, and destroyed some of the muscle mass in his right thigh.

Lehman had to learn to walk again. At the time, he didn’t know any other amputees; he spent 6 weeks trying to learn with a standard myoelectric prosthetic. He quickly became a self-proclaimed “research guinea pig” and an early adopter of the Coapt system (Lehman was 1 of the patients who wanted to take the system home for his personal prosthetic, he told MassDevice.com). It was like shopping for a sports car, he said – he could test-drive the equipment but he couldn’t take it home.

Now Lehman is an avid user. He’s extremely enthusiastic in his support for Coapt – his visit to this year’s American Orthotic & Prosthetic Assn. conference in Boston was his 2nd trip with the company. Lock says 15% of the 200 people using the Coapt system are veterans like Lehman.

Coapt spends most of its day researching and developing ways to improve the system, he said. The company is looking to develop an algorithm over the next year that can recognize patterns simultaneously – in other words, recognize the pattern for opening your palm and rotating your wrist at the same time. They also hope to 1 day create a system for leg amputees and powered orthoses.

Lock says he understands that the Coapt technology is far ahead of the market. In fact, he says, “this isn’t technology of the future, this is technology of today. Our field has been lagging for 20 years.”

The price of the prosthetic integrated with the Coapt system varies hugely depending on insurer and the prosthetic manufacturer, but they are costly. Even so, O’Connell and Lehman use their prosthetics almost every day and need them to be reliably made. “The reality is, you get what you pay for,” Lock noted.

“But can you really put a price on the quality of my life?” Lehman added.

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