When Harry Goldberg heard how two Johns Hopkins engineering students wanted to improve the manufacturing process for orthopaedic braces, he knew they were on to something. Their goal was to make leg braces so rapidly that patients could walk out of their initial fitting appointment wearing one.

Goldberg, a biomedical engineer, encouraged Param Shah and Alex Mathews to put their ideas on paper. He then recommended a meeting with the Abell Foundation.

After a few months, the foundation provided $25,000 for the students to build the prototypes. Shah and Mathews soon formed a company, Fusiform, and received additional support from the Social Innovation Lab at Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures.

Using off-the-shelf 3-D scanners that connect to a tablet, the students took 3-D scans of a person’s leg in 10 minutes, eliminating the hourlong manual fitting process in use since the 1970s. They also developed software that can quickly design a brace from a 3-D leg scan.

With a novel approach to the design that consists of several replaceable parts, Shah says: “This potentially doubles the life span of the device. Instead of throwing it away when the patient outgrows the brace, we can replace one of the pieces to accommodate any change in shape.”

While Fusiform’s goal is to produce braces in the clinic using a 3-D printer, Shah says the current technology is not viable for this model. In the meantime, the software will enable quicker web-based communication and collaboration with a manufacturing company to produce a brace.

The students are now working with clinicians to incorporate the software into manufacturing processes for leg braces. In the future, Shah and Mathews aim to use the software for other types of orthopaedic braces.