Senator Ron Wyden met with the University of Oregon Biomechanics Investigation Outreach club Tuesday morning to discuss the prosthetic arm they made for 14-year-old Joseph Horton.
The meeting was held in the Allan Price Science Commons and Research Library Visualization Room. Attendees included Horton’s mother, project supporter Paula Freed and various medical professionals who provided insight and supplies to the project.
Related: “UO BIO Team makes prosthetic arm for Springfield boy”
During the meeting, Senator Wyden discussed his ideas about utilizing technology in healthcare, and how student researchers are working to achieve that.
“Dollar for dollar, STEM gets us more value than just about anything the government is doing,” Wyden told the group.
He continued to say that technology, with the help of researchers, plays an important part in policy making for federal and local government.
“I got a major Medicare reform bill passed recently to start moving Medicare from acute care to chronic care. Do you know who filled the hearing rooms when we had our hearings on my chronic care bill? Technologists,” he said. “All the big companies – Microsoft, Intel, all of them – sent their technologists because they want to make and sell products to make people more comfortable and more independent in their homes.”
Myles Nelson, vice president of the BIO club and junior at the UO, told Wyden about his most recent research in building prosthetics. Nelson is currently inventing a more flexible foot for those who suffer from limb loss. His goal is to encourage more physical activity and to make it more accessible.
For individuals like Paula Freed – the leader of a local nonprofit supporting those with limb loss – this kind of research is critical to finance and share with the world. She openly shared her concerns about lack of coverage and opportunity for many amputees with Wyden.
“When you’re looking at that kind of thing, you’re looking at depression, obesity, diabetes and that starts a chain reaction to poor health,” Freed said. “If I couldn’t get up and walk or run or play, I don’t know what kind of condition I would be in.”
Moving forward, the BIO club will continue to do research to help other people like Joe, and has some projects in the works to make activities for those who have limb loss more accessible, according to John Francis, president of the BIO club. They’re working on a voice-activated RC car for individuals who lack use of arms or hands. Wyden said that he hopes to use what the UO BIO club has presented and bring it to the Senate.
“I think this student research and, for example, what I saw with respect to Joe, and the implications for Medicaid, I’m going to use the example that I heard when I’m in the Senate Finance Committee, and I’m fighting those cruel Trump cuts,” said Wyden. “Student research is enormously valuable, because it’s kind of a periscope into what’s actually going on. D.C. is 3,000 miles away, and in a lot of respects, D.C. might as well be Mars. But what I can do is shorten the distance and show real-world examples.”
