The VA Innovation Creation Series for Prosthetics and Assistive Technologies

This summer, the VA Center for Innovation is introducing a VA Innovation Creation Series for Prosthetics and Assistive Technologies in order to help the growing community of veterans who face life-changing disabilities that affect their accessibility and mobility. It’s the VA’s intention to improve on the technologies currently available to assist these veterans and create new ones that can help them in their day-to-day lives.

According to the VA blog, the initiative will utilize the platforms Innocentive and GrabCad and is open to individuals with design and engineering backgrounds, as well as those who possess excellent problem-solving skills. The VA Innovation Creation Series website showcases a list of challenges aimed to help this group of veterans, including:

• Developing novel upper and lower extremity devices for the end of daily-use prostheses
• Creating a medication pillbox able to both hold medications that need to be taken up to 8 times a day and remind users when to take each dose
• Creating a device that can dampen tremors when someone is performing fine motor tasks
• Designing a device to remotely change the speed and grip strength of a prosthetic device for our veterans with upper extremity injuries
• Create a way to reassign motions and buttons on gaming controllers to provide alternative access for veterans who are using them in therapy to improve eye hand coordination, fine motor control and/or range of motion.

Participants who successfully complete these challenges will be eligible for incentive prizes and the opportunity to collaborate with like-minded talents across the nation. The VA believes that calling on the mass community of problem solvers and creation-oriented people will accelerate the technology desperately needed to help veterans’ unique needs be met so their lives may be a little easier.

The initiative launched last month, and the online designs will be made and tested in an event at Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, Va., on July 28-29. For more information, visit www.innovation.va.gov/challenge.