CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WAND)- Psyonic's 'Ability Hand' is giving amputees their power of touch back, one bionic hand at a time. 

Aadeel Akhtar has made it his life's mission to give amputees a priceless experience back, to give those missing hands their chance to provide feelings they have not felt in years. "Everything that we do is for these patients that have lost these missing limbs," Akhtar tells WAND News. Psyonic is reinventing the way people with missing limbs live. 

Psyonic develops limbs for those missing them and it all started when Akhtar was just 7 years old, visiting his parent's homeland of Pakistan. "I was visiting when I was 7 and that’s the first time I met someone with a limb difference," he says. "She was my age missing her right leg using a tree branch as her clutch, living in poverty and that’s what inspired me to go into this field." 

Akhtar received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience and M.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016. That's where Akhtar and a group of engineers got to work, building countless bionic hands from scratch. Now, the hand is a full-functioning one, which the ability to grasp, move, and feel like a real hand.

The Ability Hand uses vibrations to allow amputees the opportunity to feel. When amputees grip something, it sends a vibration to the amputated arm to communicate that sensation, a feeling Akhtar says they have not felt in years. The hand is water-proof and is capable of a variety of motions, like a thumbs-up or a power grip. Here's more on all the capabilities of the Ability Hand.

The first Ability Hand went to a Champaign Army Veteran who lost his arm in Iraq, Sergeant Garrett Anderson. Sgt. Anderson used a hook on a daily basis and now used Psyonic's Ability hand. Akhtar says Sgt. Anderson is regaining priceless feelings back, "because of touch feedback, he can actually feel his daughter's hand while he's holding her, that's why we do everything that we do so patients like him can get these feelings back that they wouldn't have been able to do before." 

Making Psyonic's Ability Hand readily accessible  to anyone who needs it is one of Akhtar's main concerns. Luckily, Akhtar joyfully tells WAND News, The Ability hand is covered under Medicare. He says, "by getting it covered under Medicare, we’ve expanded that access to 75% of US patients that cannot afford an advanced bionic hand." And this crucial part of the Bionic Hand's success is why Akhtar got into this field in the first place. "That’s what we’re all about at Psyonic, making advanced medical limbs that are accessible to everyone." 

There are currently 50 patients nationwide using Psyonic's Ability Hand and that number is growing quickly. 

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