Flex-Foot Inventor Nominated for Award

Van L. Phillips, the inventor of the Ossur Flex-Foot®, was one of 12 nominees for the European Patent Office's Inventor of the Year 2008 award, an annual program that issues a prize in each of four categories: industry; small- and medium-sized enterprises/research institutes; non-European countries; and lifetime achievement. Awards were presented May 6 at a gala event in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Phillips was 21 years old and still in school when he lost his foot in a water-skiing accident in 1976. Frustrated with the unresponsive and ill-fitting prostheses available at the time, Phillips switched his studies to prosthetics. One year later, he enlisted the help of an aerospace company to analyze a carbon fiber material cut like an J-shaped foot, to be attached to a sole below and a prosthetic socket above. When weight was applied by landing on the heel, it was converted into energy that literally put spring into the step, simulating the spring action of the normal foot and allowing the wearer to run and jump.

Today, a variation of that device is the prosthesis of choice for nearly every amputee athlete in the world, no matter what the sport or the activity level. The Flex-Foot is a high performance carbon composite prosthetic foot, designed to store and release energy in order to mimic the reaction of the human anatomical foot/ankle joint. In fact, every sprinter who medaled in the 2004 Paralympic Games was wearing a Cheetah® Flex-Foot.