Clinician Insights Episode 02
Series 1- O&P and Digital Technology
Hello, and welcome back to Clinician Insights!
Clinicians Insights is Radii Devices’ contribution to the conversation about digital technologies and their role in orthotics and prosthetics.
Through this series of newsletters, we’re bringing the views of O&P clinicians together as we discuss tech and more with our expert contributors. Radii Devices was created with a mission of empowering O&P clinicians; this newsletter is just one of the ways we’re centering our users’ voices in our development, and we’re so pleased to have you with us for the discussion.
If you’d like to join the conversation, you can get in touch here.
This, our first series of Clinician Insights, features Mike Nunnery, CPO at Nunnery Orthotic & Prosthetic Technologies and Mitch Warner, CPO at Helios Bracing. Many of you will know Mike and Mitch’s reputation for expertise and excellence in our industry, and we’re so delighted to be able to share our conversations with clinicians in the US, UK and beyond as we look to innovate thoughtfully to improve our patients’ experience.
We’re bringing you three episodes this series:
Ep 01 - Fit is more important than looks, and efficiency does not equal comfort;
Ep 02 - Current- Digital tech and the fitting journey: how do we listen and learn?; and
Ep 03 - coming March 28th - Adaptation to the continually changing world.
Clinician Insights is brought to you in a hybrid format; we’ve transcribed the chat below and for those of you who prefer to listen along or are in a hurry, you can hit play below to hear the highlights of Mike and Mitch’s insights.
Thank you for joining us for these conversations. If you’d like to subscribe to future episodes or other developments from Radii Devices, you can
Speak soon,
Jenny, Josh and the rest of the Radii team
Mitch - ”That’s an important question. It’s a big factor because from your past designs, of course, that’s your knowledge base. That’s what the practitioner brings with them. So you know what corrections work, you know what alignment works, you know what fitting works. That has to be translated into the digital world. Now that can also be made more efficient because considering the time to rectify a previous design, you could do it much more efficiently digitally than you can physically and with a reduction of time.”
Mike - ”I think having the ability to analyze what you’ve done digitally either step by step, or to look at the broad picture is invaluable. The information is critical. To be able to access it quickly and specifically is good. I think too much data though isn’t good; it’s like a big messy stew. It’s got to be efficient data and to the point.“
Mitch - ”Having digital storage of the patient’s anatomy, to be able to go back in and make easier changes and then produce another device is of great value. When using the new digital technology that is in development, we can look at past designs that have been stored and learn a great deal from that moving forward. With new designs, we can look at all of the previous data collected, see where improvements can be made and always have a baseline to refer to for reference. This strategy is invaluable, will save time and money over doing it the traditional way, where you physically have to go over a plaster mould and check for any design rectifications that you may want to do moving forward.”
Mike - ”For me, visual is always good; having the ability to pull something up and do a quick comparison is extremely valuable. I think it’s most important in a platform. The ability to analyse and problem solve what mistake you may have made on a particular patient and why.”
Mike - ”Patients are always impressed when I pull the scanner out. They are always like “That’s really cool” and it is but when I come back it had better fit well. Otherwise, the patient might just say “what’s the big deal here?”.
I have older patients who I used to hand cast and when I brought the scanner out they were like “Ok, this is really cool, but… hmmm… I don’t really know about it.” So you have to educate them on it. They need to know what you’re doing; sometimes that can get lost.”
Mitch - ”You could build up a digital library which is a lot easier to do than a physical library of molds. Physical molds you cannot catalogue as well, but just going into a computer and getting what you’re looking for is of big value. Also, from those designs, that way of doing business is going to let you see more patients, if that’s your goal. It will also boost creativity and lead to being able to make adjustments to your patient’s devices quicker.”
Mike - ”You go through the process with the patient too tight, too loose, you can pull the visual up and show them this is how you did things and say “We’re going to go back and do things differently and make things better for you.” I think from that point of view it could work really well.”
Mitch - “This will help patients get better designs and improvement in technology, creating designs that are too difficult to fabricate traditionally without the aid of digital tools. It will also potentially open the door to seeing more patients. I also see this as leading to the potential of greater innovation, because with this new technology that is being developed, it will allow us to easily inspect previous designs and make those changes more efficiently, providing better and new technology for our patients. It will also improve the record keeping process of rectifications you have made.”
Mike - ”Sometimes, having a visual would be helpful to show them, to say “Look, this is where you were a year ago, this is where you are now and this is why we think we have got to do something different”. It would be valuable clinically, especially for the patient to see that. A lot of times they’ll ask “Really, I’ve changed that much?” and we’ll say “Yes, we fitted you with just a locking liner and now you’re in 15 ply.” You explain to them that their limb is going down, down, down and the socket doesn’t go with it.”
Mike - ”Find a half dozen patients who you have rapport with and ask: “Do you mind coming in? I’ve got this new technology. I’m going to scan you, make a socket, fit you and then you’re going to tell me what you think of it.” That’s how you learn. But learning right off the bat on a new patient, they are going to initially be frustrated and you’re going to be frustrated, due to the learning curve of this new technology which you need to go through to get all the benefits.”
Mike - ”One of the things the platforms need to consider is you can teach stuff online through webinars and Zooms etc. to a point, but sometimes hands-on is the best. I think hands-on is the way to have the client embrace and accept it.”
Mitch - ”I think overall in-person training is always easier because you’re doing something with your hands, even though you’re doing it on the computer. I think virtually you can learn. You can learn digital modifications online, but I think in person, if you make a mistake, there’s an instructor there that can show you how you made the mistake, go into the software and show you how to fix it.”
Thanks again to Mike and Mitch for sharing those insights from their clinical practice; these contributions from clinicians are invaluable to us and our community of practitioners and users.
We’ll be back soon (March 28th) as we wrap up this series’ discussions by thinking about adaptation to a continually changing world.
Clinician Insights is an ongoing conversation; we’d love to bring more colleagues in to share their insights. You can join the discussion, comment or tell us your thoughts by getting in touch:
The final thank you for now goes to you, our readers - we’re always grateful for your support. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel welcome to send a link to colleagues or contacts who might find it interesting too.
Until next time!
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