One Las Vegas mother might have changed the course of her 4-year-old daughter Hailey’s life with an email to the Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering.
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She is a five-year-old Baltimore Orioles fan who was born with Poland disease, a rare birth defect that causes the underdevelopment of some muscles in the body. In Hailey’s case, her right hand is so deformed she can’t grab anything at all. After effortly tossing out the first pitch and even getting to fist bump her favorite player, third baseman Manny Machado, this is a girl who is completely comfortable in her skin. “Ultimately, the goal is not for her to just have her dream come true, but to also expose the hand… people can get this hand and it’s available to anybody”. It’s officially called the Flexy-Hand 2 and modified to fit Hailey.
The new hand, created by UNLV students, has given Hailey the opportunity to do many things that she was unable to do before with her right hand including, you guessed it, gripping and throwing a baseball. The fingers grab when her wrist is down, and open up when her wrist moves upward. Although last March the team watched her throw out a ball for a UNLV baseball game, this is the first time they would have seen this version in action.
Orioles fans got to see the result of that quest – a futuristic prosthetic hand that was produced by a 3D printer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
“I picked eight different names from the front office and sent a two-page letter with a whole bunch of players”, Yong Dawson said. And more importantly, her appearance at a major league baseball game is giving further exposure to the possibilities of 3D printing and low cost prosthetic devices.
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This is just so cool on so many levels.
