As per WHO estimates, around 1.5 million people undergo amputations yearly and require prosthetic services, of which only 5 to 15% of patients have access to devices in low and middle-income countries. Orthotic and prosthetic devices have significant capabilities to improve mobility and reduce mortality, and yet over 70% of patients in India do not have access to it. The main reasons are the concentration of medical centers in urban areas leading to large travel and stay expenses, traditional casting methods limited to the geographical reach, and high device prices and delivery times. To overcome the main downsides associated with this, Arun decided to work on finding a solution. After completing his Master’s, Arun Cherian started his Ph.D. at Purdue University in developing exoskeletal suits. However, he left it incomplete and pursued recreating high-quality, affordable assistive devices from natural composite bamboo. After more than a year of research and testing through multi-center clinical trials, Rise Bionics developed a natural composite-based flexible foot using which people can run, play, and dance.
Started in 2015, Rise Bionics provides custom-fitted prosthetic or orthotic devices within a day or two of scanning the patient. Arun Cherian spent over six years developing this system. Hence, today they can 3D scan a patient any part of the body, head, neck, spine, skull, hand, or leg at their home. We can digitally manufacture any bionics with subliminal accuracy in 2-3 hrs. The process is simple; a local healthcare practitioner scans the patient in their home or neighborhood hospital in two to three minutes and uploads the file to the cloud. Secondly, the central facility digitally modifies and fabricates the file per the diagnosis. Rise Bionics does not 3D print; because it takes 15-24 hrs minimum to print one device. They create prosthetics with their proprietary machine, which they wholly make in their facility; Rise Bionics’ digital carving will take about 7-8 minutes only. Thirdly, it is couriered within a few hours to the medical practitioner for patient fitting and device service. The cane prosthetics leg is now less than 1% of their business.
Arun and his team went to Zurich and competed with German, Japanese, and American teams, which came up with experimental devices like 100000$, theirs was a couple of 100$, and they came first in the competition in 2016. Athletes wearing Rise Bionics devices clocked in the fastest lap time and came first in two of the three obstacle races for prosthetic legs at the Cybathlon in Zurich. Physical disability can be financially stressful; hence, Rise Bionics works towards reintegrating patients into society as soon as possible. They have served more than 1000 patients across India with assistive devices for the whole body. They serve at corporate hospitals, community hospitals, and not-for-profit organizations. They are planning a pan-India rollout with the Indian central government and even other state governments mixed; they are doing their first project with the Karnataka state government starting February 2023. They also work with ALIMCO, a central government PSU for all-India expansion. The challenge faced by Arun in expanding is that they are looking for Capex Infrastructure investment to shift their manufacturing unit to a 4000 sq. ft. place and also need help in finding ancillary personnel to train other hospitals and also sales and marketing personnel. In all of Asia, Rise Bionics is the only one providing this, and if the central government can take up this technology, Arun has already cleared clinical evaluation and trained all the 12 centers of the central government across India; they have purchased the Rise Bionics scanners, and now they are doing a pilot pan India roll-out, and if the central government can take this up, this would put India ahead of US and Europe in providing access to patients to high quality bionic assistive devices.