Dankmeyer, Inc. was proud to be a Gold Level sponsor of this groundbreaking conference held at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD on 9/28/2014. A number of Dankmeyer staff participated in the daylong event. E-NABLE is a growing group of over 1500 members who have come together from all over the world to help create and design 3D Printed assistive hand devices for those in need. Some of those devices were printed and assembled at this conference, and are modeled by Dankmeyer participants in the picture here.
Mark Hopkins, Theresa Funk, Sheryl Nathanson, Angie Swindell and Shawn Ross participated in the conference.
What exactly was this conference all about? The e-NABLE website states:
“e-NABLE’s collaborative approach to design and democratization of 3D-printed prostheses could significantly improve millions of lives worldwide. Now is the time to bring these technologies and practices into mainstream medicine.” – Dr. Albert Chi – Trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medical, Lieutenant Commander in the US Naval Reserve and world-renowned researcher on state-of-the-art prosthetics.
• We have a conference to introduce prosthetists to the 3D printing world.
• We SHOW them our designs and introduce them to the global e-NABLE community.
• We walk them through how to assemble a device – step, by step.
• We invite children who are missing fingers and hands and their families to attend and teach them how to create their own devices as well as introduce them to prosthetists and the medical community – so they can see just how much these $50 hands can do.
• We introduce prosthetists to the collaborative innovation practices of e-NABLE, and we learn from them about ways we can increase options for them and their patients.
Angie Swindell, our Clinical Director models a device.
Theresa Funk, Dankmeyer's Resident in Prosthetics and Orthotics, prepared a summary of the conference in a short document.
Another attendee, Cristina Romagnoli, PhD., posted a very informative blog about the event, with a number of pictures and video. She also provided a Twitter feed #EnabletheFuture. Cristina is a Physical Therapist at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
The Baltimore Sun was there and featured an article about the event which you can read here.
There is also a video about 3D devices in a story about a father looking for prosthetic solutions for his son. Watch that YouTube video here.
Dankmeyer team members are very busy exploring the latest 3D printing and scanning technologies to bring to Dankmeyer. We will post developments soon!