Positive Impact of New Technologies

This is a picture that shows the evolution of the prosthetic leg. Its heading says "Perfecting The Prosthetic Leg, how incremental innovation works for patients". It is from Eucomed, which is a company that represents the medical technology industry in Europe.

This picture shows the evolution of a prosthetic leg since 1800, we can see that it goes from wood to a much more modern material. And in between the oldest and the newest there are five more prototypes.

We can see that, in this case, technology has had a positive impact on medical assitance as this prosthetic leg that seems much more comfortable now than before. The continuous innovations that have been made throughout the years has enabled the prosthetic leg to imitate a real leg and its uses. For example, between the first prototypes, that is just a peg leg, and the next one, we can see that there is an articulation, like a knee, that appears. Also the materials of which the prosthetic legs are made have also changed to better and more comfortable ones. We see that little by little the prosthetic leg gets different elements such as a shoe, and it also takes more the form of a leg. The next two prototypes resemble each other except for the materials they are made of and the forms. The form of the second is more leg -like while the other has still the previous form. The next two, which were made after 1920, have tried to imitate as much as possible a real leg but the first one seems to have a less comfortable way of tying it to the leg than the next one, which just has the foot like a real one. The last and newest one is no longer an imitation of a leg but a tool that enables less-than-two-legged people to be able to get over their handicap.

Medical progress are above all done to make, in this case, the loss of a leg less harsh and it also helps to simplify the life of the patients. 

1. The technological progress of the prosthetic leg, nowadays, allows one-legged or none-legged people to walk like any two-legged person. Also thanks to these advances, sport games like "Special Olympics" exist, in which handicaped people can do almost any kind of sport competition. Thanks to the progress of medical technology the limitations of handicaps (not being able to walk, to run, to do sports,...) are being counteracted.