Liberty Technology Liberty Mutual has been involved in the rehabilitation of injured workers for more than three decades. Through research and development conducted at Liberty Technology, prosthetic and orthotic products, such as the Liberty Mutual Boston Elbow , are developed. Liberty Technology's efforts go well beyond injured workers, as the company also supplies prosthetic and orthotic equipment for children. Recent research efforts have yielded excellent results with the introduction of the Liberty Programmable VariGrip II and the new Digital Boston Elbow . These two products incorporate microprocessor technology in the prosthesis to enhance performance, improve reliability and provide more flexibility.
Practitioners can now customize the prosthetic control to suit their patients' unique needs.
As the patients' capabilities change, the prosthetic system can change with them. Communication with these new prosthetic controllers is achieved through either infrared or hard-wire links which allow the control program and adjustment settings to be downloaded to the prosthesis. These links also provide a way to get feedback from the prosthesis for troubleshooting purposes. A practitioner can actually interrogate the prosthesis to see if it is operating properly. Since this is done through standard computer interfacing, the next step will be to implement a remote, diagnostic capability to service prosthetic patients around the world.