Nexxus Scotland

Touch Bionics

Revolutionary supplier of upper limb prosthetics increases its provision of clinical services

Touch Bionics is a truly pioneering, Scottish company supplying upper limb prosthetics including the world's first commercially-available, multi-articulating, bionic hand.

The company is currently expanding and shifting emphasis from manufacturing to providing clinical services from its Livingston base. With 95% of its business emanating from outside the UK, Touch Bionics already has around 500 fitting partners and is actively seeking to expand international partnerships in the field of advanced prosthetics.

Touch Bionics' three key products are the i-LIMB Hand, LIVINGSKIN and  ProDigits; self-contained fingers that are individually powered and controlled for patients with partial hand loss.

Livingston based Touch Bionics is very much a 21st century company, developing and refining leading edge technology and clinical knowledge to develop prosthetic solutions. Yet its history began within the UK National Health Service as far back as the 1960s when a team at the Princess Margaret Rose Hospital in Edinburgh started pioneering work to help children affected by Thalidomide. 

Before the twentieth century was out, the team had already won international acclaim for developing several life-changing prosthetic solutions, including developing and fitting the world's first electrically powered shoulder.
In 2003, the company was spun out from the NHS with significant investment from Scottish Health Innovations Ltd (SHIL), Scottish Enterprise, Archangel and the Scottish Co-investment Fund.

But while Touch Bionics is very much a business and technology success story for Scotland, those who gain the most are those people worldwide whose lives have been utterly transformed by replacement digits, hands or upper limbs which allow them to live lives as near normal as possible.

Phil Newman, Director of Marketing for Touch Bionics, said, "This is a very exciting time for us as we move from our manufacturing base into clinical services; providing fitting, training and rehabilitation services to the ultimate users of our products.

"The change brings huge benefits however as the direct feedback from patients allows us to constantly refine and improve our patient offering through increased understanding of the real issues they face.

"We benefit too from having a world-class team of in-house technicians and clinicians, many from the  east of Scotland who are able to translate this feedback into rapid and effective product development."

Touch Bionics offers a range of products to a very international market and achieves a large proportion of its sales in the US.

The i-LIMB Hand is a multi-articulating, bionic hand which amputees praise for delivering a much lighter touch dexterity than anything previously available. Its five, independently powered digits open and close around objects, allowing users to feed themselves and manipulate objects without exerting undue pressure.

For those people who have lost only part of their hand, ProDigits (short for prosthetic digits) can provide the flexibility of replacement fingers; again individually controlled and offering greatly advanced functionality and flexibility for the user. No other powered device has been available to partial hand patients in the past but now ProDigits restores control to those affected by partial hand loss and the independence previously associated with it.

LIVINGSKIN takes prosthetic addition even further still. The high definition silicone "skin" is crafted to mimic human skin by emulating the three dermal layers found in nature. Beyond that, freckles, small hairs and colour matching, individually crafted for each user means that the prosthesis is as unobtrusive as it is possible to be.

Phil Newman adds, "Life is all about interaction with others, at work, at play, in every social context. A LIVINGSKIN aesthetic restoration is all about bringing that balance back into the life of someone who has been set apart through amputation or disfigurement.

"The benefits go way beyond mere functionality therefore and affect the social, psychological and emotional responses between an individual and the wider world in which they operate." 

It is this understanding which sets Touch Bionics apart and sees them leading the world in their specific field. The scientific and clinical expertise available to them within the Edinburgh and wider Scottish life sciences community feeds the company's constant hunger for technological and scientific improvement but it is the feedback from end-users worldwide which continues to shape the very nature of their product development.

As Touch Bionics moves deliberately further into providing clinical services, it is feedback on the real issues of aesthetics, comfort and use in the real world that they want to hear about from users. This feedback is invaluable in creating prosthetics which go way beyond mastering tasks and start to rebuild lives.

Back to case study listing