Bionic hand changes student's life

A sport-loving student said that it took him just "minutes" to adapt to an advanced bionic hand fitted after he lost his own in an horrific accident.

Evan Reynolds, a sports biology student at University of the West of England (UWE), was the second person in the UK to be fitted with the revolutionary i-Limb, produced by Scottish manufacturer Touch Bionics.

The 19-year-old, from Haslemere in Surrey, was devastated when his left hand was ripped off on a summer's evening in 2006 as his friend was driving him home from a day out - destroying his dreams of joining the British Army.

He was sitting in the passenger seat with his hand resting on the wound-down window ledge when the car scraped a wooden post at the exit to the car park. Mr Reynolds' hand was taken off instantly.

It was Mr Reynolds' older brother Richard who first saw a TV report about the i-Limb and contacted Touch Bionics.

The firm was still working on a prototype at the time, but after a number of tests and meetings with prosthetic experts, in February 2008 Mr Reynolds became the second person in Britain to have the i-Limb fitted.

The bionic hand is controlled by myoelectrics - muscle signals - from the remaining part of the limb, which open and close the hand's life-like fingers.

"I put it on and within minutes I was using it as well as I can today," Mr Reynolds said.

"People always ask how it's changed my life, but there's no specific thing. It's the hundreds of everyday things you take for granted, which I can do again - like peeling a potato, catching a ball, holding a bottle of water.

Time Magazine named the i-Limb as one of the Top 50 inventions of 2008 and Touch Bionics won the Limbless Association's Prosthetic Product Innovation Award for 2008 for the product.