Mike Koon, Marketing & Communications Coordinator, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign09.21.16
It is estimated that in the United States about six million emergency room visits involve broken bones. Ask anyone who’s been there—breaking a bone is no fun. Of course there is the pain of the initial injury and not being fully functional for a few months.
For those patients who will ultimately need a cast, there are also extenuating affects like not being able to get to an itch, the smell of the cast, and extra effort needed to cover it when taking a shower. About 40 percent of those patients experience some sort of skin or soft tissue damage throughout their experience as well.
A University of Illinois startup, Cast21, is helping take part of the sting out of the recovery with a revolutionary cast design. Made of various polymers, its netted structure allows for breathability and gives patients and physicians easy access to the affected area for treatment and comfort. And it is completely waterproof, meaning no need to cover your arm or leg with a garbage bag in the shower. It also doesn’t trap water against the skin like some of the current models on the market.
The team of CEO Ashley Moy, a senior in bioengineering; chief operations officer Justin Brooks, a graduate of the electrical and computer engineering (ECE) department; and chief technology officer Jason Troutner, a 2016 Illinois graduate in mechanical science and engineering; is currently Alpha testing the product.
Cast21 will be one of about two-dozen teams that will be demoing their work on Thursday, Sept. 22 as part of the Pygmalion Festival from 4:30-9:30 pm at the Krannert Center lobby.
Cast21, a moniker chosen for “building medical casts for the 21st century,” started as an ECE interdisciplinary senior design project during the fall of 2015. The team chose to focus on casts partly because it’s one of the aspects of medicine that hasn’t been updated in decades and because Troutner had worn 50 casts in the past three years.
“Jason was passionate about the issue,” Moy said. “After hearing him speak on it, I knew this is what we had to work on.”
The team has developed a short-armed cast that can be used for a distal radial or distal ulnar fracture, and the technology can scale from an arm to a leg, where 92 percent of the reported fractures occur and represent 99 percent of market share in terms of dollars spent.
“In order to immobilize the joint in a wrist fracture for instance, you need to make sure that you don’t twist, bend or wave,” Moy said. “We’ve made sure there are materials in all the correct places to prevent that from happening.”
The product has gone through several iterations—using the likes of wrapping tape, athletic tape, pipe cleaners, ribbons and markers as materials.
“All of our iterations were open structured,” Moy said. “Our criteria were that it needed to be waterproof and not retain water underneath it, but still have the structural integrity it needed to serve its function,” Moy said.
In explaining how the team reached its final design, Moy used an analogy. “Imagine you needed to get from one island to the next. You wouldn’t pour concrete in the water between the two places; you’d build a bridge using support material only where you needed it to get the job done. We’ve applied those same principles to healing. Casts are only meant to hold the bone in place; the body does all the healing itself.”
An added benefit is the need to manufacture just a few different sizes because physicians are able to grab the cast off a shelf and stretch the material to custom fit most patients for any part of an arm or leg.
The Cast21 team knew it was on to something when it received positive feedback at the Biomedical Engineering Society’s annual meeting last October, even though they were still early in the process. The team received affirmation of its potential success on the market after claiming first prize in a business competition hosted by Saint Louis University in December then was a finalist in the Cozad New Venture competition in April.
“There was so much we didn’t know going into Cozad,” Moy said. “The competition allowed us to look at the really critical parts of a business model that we hadn’t considered before.”
The team has received support from physicians, several of whom have indicated they’d be willing to try it out on their patients. Athletic trainers and doctors in sports medicine are especially excited because of its openness, which allows the use of electrical muscle stimulation and vibration therapy even before the cast is taken off. This promises to expedite the recovery of athletes, where getting back to action even a few days earlier can be huge.
Cast21 just finished a stint at Zeroto510, the country’s top medical device accelerator located in Memphis, and is Alpha testing it by having team members wear the casts themselves. The visibility of wearing it in public, even playing golf with it on, has invoked a number of inquiries from curious onlookers. The team is hoping to go through a design freeze in the coming months.
“I wore it for two weeks straight, even in the shower, and it didn’t cause any allergic reaction,” said Moy. “Every time we do a test, we learn a little more about it.”
A native of Barrington, Ill., Moy chose Illinois because she could pursue passions in both art, where she was part of the Marching Illini, concert bands, and a dance club—and science—where she was an undergraduate advisor in bioengineering and on a competitive research team. She plans to focus on Cast21 full-time after graduation, which satisfies a goal she has had for some time.
“All through high school and my college career, I have always said that I don’t want to just change lives, but do something that is going to impact humanity,” Moy said. “With this cast I, along with my co-founders, have the potential to impact the way society will heal in the future.”
For those patients who will ultimately need a cast, there are also extenuating affects like not being able to get to an itch, the smell of the cast, and extra effort needed to cover it when taking a shower. About 40 percent of those patients experience some sort of skin or soft tissue damage throughout their experience as well.
A University of Illinois startup, Cast21, is helping take part of the sting out of the recovery with a revolutionary cast design. Made of various polymers, its netted structure allows for breathability and gives patients and physicians easy access to the affected area for treatment and comfort. And it is completely waterproof, meaning no need to cover your arm or leg with a garbage bag in the shower. It also doesn’t trap water against the skin like some of the current models on the market.
The team of CEO Ashley Moy, a senior in bioengineering; chief operations officer Justin Brooks, a graduate of the electrical and computer engineering (ECE) department; and chief technology officer Jason Troutner, a 2016 Illinois graduate in mechanical science and engineering; is currently Alpha testing the product.
Cast21 will be one of about two-dozen teams that will be demoing their work on Thursday, Sept. 22 as part of the Pygmalion Festival from 4:30-9:30 pm at the Krannert Center lobby.
Cast21, a moniker chosen for “building medical casts for the 21st century,” started as an ECE interdisciplinary senior design project during the fall of 2015. The team chose to focus on casts partly because it’s one of the aspects of medicine that hasn’t been updated in decades and because Troutner had worn 50 casts in the past three years.
“Jason was passionate about the issue,” Moy said. “After hearing him speak on it, I knew this is what we had to work on.”
The team has developed a short-armed cast that can be used for a distal radial or distal ulnar fracture, and the technology can scale from an arm to a leg, where 92 percent of the reported fractures occur and represent 99 percent of market share in terms of dollars spent.
“In order to immobilize the joint in a wrist fracture for instance, you need to make sure that you don’t twist, bend or wave,” Moy said. “We’ve made sure there are materials in all the correct places to prevent that from happening.”
The product has gone through several iterations—using the likes of wrapping tape, athletic tape, pipe cleaners, ribbons and markers as materials.
“All of our iterations were open structured,” Moy said. “Our criteria were that it needed to be waterproof and not retain water underneath it, but still have the structural integrity it needed to serve its function,” Moy said.
In explaining how the team reached its final design, Moy used an analogy. “Imagine you needed to get from one island to the next. You wouldn’t pour concrete in the water between the two places; you’d build a bridge using support material only where you needed it to get the job done. We’ve applied those same principles to healing. Casts are only meant to hold the bone in place; the body does all the healing itself.”
An added benefit is the need to manufacture just a few different sizes because physicians are able to grab the cast off a shelf and stretch the material to custom fit most patients for any part of an arm or leg.
The Cast21 team knew it was on to something when it received positive feedback at the Biomedical Engineering Society’s annual meeting last October, even though they were still early in the process. The team received affirmation of its potential success on the market after claiming first prize in a business competition hosted by Saint Louis University in December then was a finalist in the Cozad New Venture competition in April.
“There was so much we didn’t know going into Cozad,” Moy said. “The competition allowed us to look at the really critical parts of a business model that we hadn’t considered before.”
The team has received support from physicians, several of whom have indicated they’d be willing to try it out on their patients. Athletic trainers and doctors in sports medicine are especially excited because of its openness, which allows the use of electrical muscle stimulation and vibration therapy even before the cast is taken off. This promises to expedite the recovery of athletes, where getting back to action even a few days earlier can be huge.
Cast21 just finished a stint at Zeroto510, the country’s top medical device accelerator located in Memphis, and is Alpha testing it by having team members wear the casts themselves. The visibility of wearing it in public, even playing golf with it on, has invoked a number of inquiries from curious onlookers. The team is hoping to go through a design freeze in the coming months.
“I wore it for two weeks straight, even in the shower, and it didn’t cause any allergic reaction,” said Moy. “Every time we do a test, we learn a little more about it.”
A native of Barrington, Ill., Moy chose Illinois because she could pursue passions in both art, where she was part of the Marching Illini, concert bands, and a dance club—and science—where she was an undergraduate advisor in bioengineering and on a competitive research team. She plans to focus on Cast21 full-time after graduation, which satisfies a goal she has had for some time.
“All through high school and my college career, I have always said that I don’t want to just change lives, but do something that is going to impact humanity,” Moy said. “With this cast I, along with my co-founders, have the potential to impact the way society will heal in the future.”