Improving Rehabilitation and Reducing Re-Occurrence of Diabetic Foot Ulcers by Shifting Plantar Pressure with Exo-Tendon & Exo-Skeletal Footwear Systems

The assistive exo-skeletal footwear promises to help people regain activities of daily living and to resume and maintain full employment by reducing load on the forefoot, reducing fall risk and augmenting foot propulsion that was lost due to foot amputation, ulceration and claudication. Because the exoskeleton will be inserted into diabetic footwear, it carries the risks associated with use of that footwear, which includes patients’ issues of abandonment and non-adherence, we propose the following objectives: 1) “Agile’ design improvements of off-loading/propulsive exoskeleton footwear based upon in-depth human factors analysis 2) biomechanical performance testing of the refined footwear in both healthy volunteers and target diabetic patient population 3) Deploying the prototypes for use into patients’ home environment and evaluating extended use as a means to validate the human-centered design work. Anticipated outcomes of this work will benefit Patients, Researchers, Diabetic Footwear Companies and Orthotics & Prosthetics Companies through the expected products: 1) a new set of qualitative human factors metrics based upon in-depth in-home patient interviews, 2) biomechanical performance testing results, 3) in-home evaluation results to understand the human factors that maximize adoption and long term adherence. 4) optimized design specifications for exo-skeletons based on the human factors .