Custom Ankle Brace Solutions - Insightful Products - Drop Foot, and Foot or Ankle braces (2024)

Insightful Products offers a full array of AFO solutions. Each of our custom AFO ankle braces is designed for a specific biomechanical problem. We have the most advanced and newest designs on the market. Our new AFOs or new ankle brace solutions are the most innovative AFOs in the industry.

Video Transcript:
One of the ways we do this is with our custom brace line. Our braces are specifically designed for each biomechanical pathology. For instance, for medial instability, we have the Blaze MI design. If you’ve donned braces in the past, you know that the medial malleolus drives into the medial upright during mid-stance. This brace design is a little unusual because what we’ve done is taken the medial joint and moved it up and away from the medial malleolus. This allows for more comfort because when that medial malleolus comes into play during mid-stance, it’s cushioned yet controlled. Having total contact on the medial side gives us better efficacy. We even did a navicular window. Now, you’ll also notice that we have a 5th ray cut out. Allowing that 5th ray to drop gives us better correctional opportunity on the medial side plus it fits better into the shoe. This is the Blaze design for medial instability.

This design is for drop foot; this is called the Step Smart brace. With a PLS AFO, it may seem that it’s flexible but it’s really just too stiff so when the patient hits the ground their knee is buckling, and they may struggle with that buckling or they may end up having to take a shorter step length. The Step Smart brace is designed not only for swing phase but also for stance phase. Normally, you would see the joints on the medial lateral sides, but the new posterior position of the Jacob joint allows you to dial in the right amount of shock absorption for your patients’ needs. This is done with the bumper system. Each brace comes with a full set of bumpers with different durometers and allows you to find the setting which is best suited for shock absorption.
The Cuboid Lock brace is specially designed for lateral instability. You may notice when you invert your foot that the cuboid goes through a large amount of excursion. We take advantage of that. The mechanics of this strap really controls that inversion by locking it down. This is called the Cuboid Lock design.

Our Schooner design is a leather gauntlet which solves two of the major problems you have with these types of braces: one, it’s easier to put on and two, it doesn’t force you to upsize your shoe. Let me explain: For donning, this brace incorporates special speed lacing which opens really easily, then the patient just uses the finger loop to pull the brace on. Afterwards, the speed lacing with one pull allows it to tighten all the way down. This is important because compression is really what you are after with these types of designs.

As for donning it into your shoe, what we’ve done is we’ve done a trim line that comes behind the medial malleolus and navicular. This achieves two things: one is that you no longer have to worry about impingement on those boney prominences but also by having a trim line behind, it fits better into your shoe.

Another technique we have used is to make the trim line up a little higher in the back; again, this is to allow it to fit better in your shoe but has a dual purpose because its flexibility in the transverse plane allows squeezing and good compression that you are really after to help these patients.

The primary diagnosis that you use this for would be arthritis. You’ll notice that we have already done a lateral malleolar window for these types of cases.

Our braces are specifically designed for each biomechanical pathology, and we expect that you will find better outcomes because of that.