A course in prosthetics for the developing world: Merging education, research, and industry to teach biomedical design for social impact

Under the auspices of the MIT D-Lab, a team of graduate students has instructed a course since 2008 that centers around teaching low-cost prosthetic design for resource-constrained environments. Recently, the course has evolved into a fully immersive design experience that pairs student teams with real-life international stakeholders and industry partners. Following this structure, projects initiated as part of the course have been tested at field sites around the world, stimulated further research, advanced student careers, raised additional grant money, and generated peer-reviewed publications and intellectual property.

I. Introduction

Medical technology advancement worldwide depends on an exchange of research, development and evaluation activities between resource-rich and resource-constrained environments. This is especially true for prosthetic technologies [1]. To promote this crosstalk, a group of MIT graduate students researching design of prostheses launched a course in 2008 to teach MIT undergraduates the fundamentals of creating low-cost prostheses for resource-constrained settings. The course, titled ‘Prosthetics for the Developing World (PDW),’ has since been offered regularly under the auspices of the MIT D-Lab.