Boylan Students Help Make Prosthetic Hand For 9-Year-Old

If you're clamoring for more positive news stories, this definitely is one for you. It's so good, it's grabbing national notice from ABC News. Riley & I talked about it this morning on the show as well.

As our news partners at Eyewitness News explain, nine-year-old Kylie Wicker of Roscoe was born without fingers on her left hand. Her parents wanted to get her a prosthetic hand, but the cost is in the tens of thousands of dollars and insurance doesn't pick up the entire amount. Plus, Kylie still is growing, meaning whatever is purchased today might be too small in no time. But Dad had an idea:

Staff [at Boylan] received an email from Kylie's dad last month, asking the school to help in the process of making an affordable prosthetic hand through the schools 3-D printer. “He had seen online that you could make a 3D printout of the fingers on a plastic printer, and he knew we had one” said Bud May, the teacher of the Engineering Graphics class at Boylan High School.

So is it actually affordable? Well, it's estimated that the cost to produce the prosthetic this way will be $10. It's so affordable that students are making two for Kylie.

Check out the full video from Alexis McAdams at Eyewitness News:

In this instance the students are learning, Kylie is getting help, and perhaps this model of providing a prosthetic can help thousands of children across the country. Not too bad for a story out of Rockford, IL.