Developing World Prosthetics
MIT's Edgerton Center offers this course built on a collaboration with the Jaipur Foot Organization, aimed at improving prosthetic and orthotic design for the developing world. Lectures cover the basics of human walking, gait disabilities such as polio and above-knee or below-knee amputation, and both developed and developing world approaches to treating them. Patient perspectives and current research are presented alongside the engineering content. Students from bioengineering, mechanical engineering, materials science, and medical backgrounds form multidisciplinary teams to design and prototype low-cost orthotic and prosthetic devices, presenting their finished work at the end of the term. Materials available through MIT OpenCourseWare include lecture topics, project guidelines, and team assignments, offered under a Creative Commons license with no cost to access.