The Secretary of Veterans Affairs David J. Shulkin, M.D. has unveiled what is described as the world’s most advanced commercial prosthetic — the Life Under Kinetic Evolution (LUKE) arm. The veterans will be the first to receive this new technology. The LUKE arm was unveiled during the VA’s visit to the VA New York Harbor Health Care System’s Manhattan campus.
The event included other important activities like the demonstration of the technology, which was offered to the first Veteran amputees. The LUKE project is an eight year project between the VA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and industry. The LUKE Arm has gone through 8 years of testing and research. It holds the potential of bringing significant benefit to Veterans and many others with upper-extremity amputations. Compared to the less-advanced prosthetics, the whole LUKE arm can move as a single unit. This means there is reduced labor-intensive process, which involves controlling one joint at a time.
Apart from that the LUKE arm also features the first ever commercially available powered shoulder, with up to 10 powered degrees of freedom. This means that the arm will be able to give veterans with amputed arms to be able to perform variety of activities that are one and two handed. The person using the arm can perform simple tasks like drinking from a glass, picking up small pieces of food to eat, cooking or gift-wrapping presents.
Secretary Shulkin noted that there was no commercial market for that kind of technology. He noted that because of the small size of the patient population, the private sectors cannot focus in production of such technological devices. For this reason the VA placed a lot of research efforts into the project – efforts that cannot be replicated by the private sector.
Fred Downs and Artie McAuley were the first Veterans to receive the LUKE arm. McAuley described the LUKE arm as a great tool especially for those who have under gone high level. While Fred Downs commented that the technology has improved his ability to perform his daily activities.
In the fiscal year of 2016, the VA offered medical care to almost 90,000 Veterans with different levels of amputations, and more than 20,000 of whom had upper-limb involvement.
