Clinician Insights Episode 03
Series 1: O&P and Digital Technology
Hey! Welcome back to Clinician Insights! This is our third and final episode in the first series of our podcast.
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 centring 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 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 have brought you three episodes of this series:
Episode 01 Fit is more important than looks, and efficiency does not equal comfort
Episode 02 Digital tech and the fitting journey: how do we listen and learn?
Episode 03, which you’re reading now, 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
Mike - ”My patients want to know they’re going to someone who’s running a practice and trying to do the best they can, and using the most up-to-date technology. You just kind of go from there.”
Mitch - ”I think one of the biggest challenges is scanning and the scanning comes first.”
Mike - ”It’s really based on learning what my scanner’s parameters are and also learning that when you scan a human being, they’re never fully still. When you scan there’s a little bit of movement and some people move a lot. When I brought my new scanner, I was reducing the volume way too much, as my last scanner was less accurate. It took a matter of 6-8 patients to figure that out. Once I got through that, I was good to go. You have to take these factors into consideration and once you’ve figured that out and you’ve learnt to adapt in various situations, then you go through your mods.”
Mitch - ”As far as digital software, we are looking for modifications that are user-friendly, because some applications can be complex. The more complex they are, there’s a bigger learning curve for the clinicians to get well-suited to use it in practice.”
Mitch - ”I think the biggest challenges from what I’m hearing, are people learning to design and modify on their own. I think right now the average person sees a plaster mold and they can touch and feel it in real time to make those corrections. It’s the physicality; they have a physical model in front of them. The learning curve of moving into the digital space and making those corrections, I think that’s the challenge for some people. There are some people that want to learn it, but once they start doing it they find out it’s not as easy as they first thought.”
Mike - “You can still do the traditional hand casting, I think it’s important to learn that skill anyway. I think it helps you to translate the older method into the new digital method. But there’s no doubt that being able to capture a scan of a patient. I can have a print in the printer literally 20 minutes after I’ve scanned, if I have the time.”
Mitch - ”The cost is also limiting practitioners from purchasing the digital technology.”
Mike - ”Whenever you do something new it’s a matter of figuring it out. That’s the thing with prosthetists and orthotists, what we’re about is problem-solving and you still have to do it with the digital technology. You’ve got to learn it, there’s no way around it. I think flexibility is key. I think that new practitioners are going to need that technical support to start with.”
Mitch - ”I think ultimately for people who are not using digital modifications software, the challenge for them will be a learning curve. So I think the more user-friendly the digital software is, the more they can relate to it, the more visually appealing it is and easy on the eyes. I think all of these combinations will help make that transition for the average practitioner.”
Mike - ”I know a lot of people just want to dive right into it and that’s fine. They need to sort of put the brakes on, so they’re not going to get frustrated and just say this is no good, I’m just going to go back to the way I did it before.”
Mike - ”The biggest impact now is the field becoming more efficient in what we do. We need to be knowledgeable in the technology around us and willing to adapt to it. I see without a doubt digital platforms and additive manufacture as a huge component.”
Mitch - ”I think that digital technology is going to go more and more into 3D printing. Some past designs you may come up with a new design or something you want to change, or want to engineer something different. In-person on plaster, you may not be able to do that, as you may not be able to fabricate that, but you can come up with some really intricate designs digitally that a 3D printer can print out and make it more cost-effective that way.”
Mike - ”The danger of scanning and additive manufacture is people can say ‘I’ll take a scan, pop that scan via email to a central fabrication, who’ll do the modifications and mail it back and you’re good to go’. Well, the problem with that is that my patients want to know I’m in charge of this design and their clinical care. If I’m in charge of their clinical care then I have to have a role as their practitioner in the design, I can’t send it out for someone else to do the digital mods. I can’t have a faceless person who has never seen my patient do it for me.”
Mitch - ”In the future I see myself using digital technology a lot more. I would like to see myself seeing patients from greater distance, on a much more regular basis and also globally. So, if you can see patients globally from a scan in the digital world, you could design a device for them. You have much more of a far reach of patients digitally than you do traditionally.”
Mike - ”I’m not set where I’m at digitally, you sort of have to keep looking to see what’s new and how you can make it a little bit better.”
Mike - ”Technology is here to stay, I can’t even see how it couldn’t be, because like I said if it’s used properly it’s very cost-efficient and it’s going to grow and evolve.”
Thanks again to Mike and Mitch for sharing these insights from their clinical practice; such contributions from clinicians are invaluable to us and our community of practitioners and users.
We’ll be back in May with our new series of Clinicians Insights, when we’ll be joined by Jeff Erenstone, CPO, owner at Mountain Orthotic and Prosthetic Services, and Andrea Cutti, CPO, Applied Research Manager at Centro Protesi INAIL, experts in O&P digital workflows. Our first episode with Andrea and Jeff will be released soon, and we’ll be dropping that straight into your inbox.
Clinician Insights is an ongoing conversation; we’d love to bring more colleagues in to share their views. You can join the discussion, comment or tell us your thoughts by getting in touch:
And of course, thank you to our readers - we’re always grateful for your support.
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