Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
objects, and using his hands. He feared that effects of his injury would
preclude meaningful employment. Moreover, he longed for the previously sim-
ple ability to eat food on his own without assistance. There was no medical or
engineering intervention available on the market that could solve his problem.
Active academic research projects focus on understanding how human
hands work [
1
] and how to augment these movements using technology
[
11
,
4
,
3
]. However, development of such knowledge and technology is typically
targeted toward solving research challenges and lacks design attributes that
would make the technology practical for a daily user. In research, there is no
incentive to build an easy-to-use device because investing time and resources
reducing the weight or enhancing the design of a system does not address
the fundamental research challenge of proving whether such a system is fea-
sible, nor does it enhance the published output associated with that research.
Sadly, for people suffering from these challenges, the technology developed
through such academic efforts only proceeds through functional optimization
if there is a market: a market is typically defined by the money that can be
generated with developing a solution. In most cases, technologies for people
with disabilities do not have a sucient market because (1) the population is
too small, (2) individual differences are too large, and (3) insurance does not
cover devices that are life-enabling but not necessary for survival. YokyWorks
Foundation [
12
] was created, staffed, funded, and organized to successfully
solve problems such as these, that fall in the gap between academic research
and commercial products.
8.2 History
YokyWorks grew from outreach projects undertaken at Carnegie Mellon Uni-
versity, personally funded and supported on a volunteer basis by students
with a desire to have a positive impact on someone's life. The initial successes
created referrals and inspired the team to search for existing organizations
serving this niche. Looking for similarly situated organizations identified a
void surrounded by three well established pillars: academia, commercial ven-
tures, and philanthropic organizations.
Academic research institutions were perceived to focus on long horizon
development efforts, and commercial enterprises on profitable and near term
development efforts. Neither commercial nor academic enterprises are par-
ticularly well suited for near term research with highly uncertain commer-
cial value. The challenge in developing individually oriented solutions using
volunteers in an academic setting is multifold. Academic research projects
often have long or uncertain development cycles, which is fundamentally
inconsistent with the immediate needs that YokyWorks sought to address.
YokyWorks sought to conduct much of the design, development and test-
ing work using independent volunteers. Similarly, the commercial enterprise
