Help! Looking for pedography scanner

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Hello everyone and glad to be part of this exciting think tank!

I am a qualified podiatrist and I run my own private practice for the last couple of years.

Problem is, due to lack of budget, I do not own my own pedography platform and I was cooperating with colleagues, who came in and did the pedography together (static and dynamic + foam box impression + visual gait observation + MSK assessment) which was then sent to the lab for orthotics manufacture.

I am now ready to purchase my own pedography platform, as it is something people hear ask for very, very often.

I am looking for a decent and low-budget pedography platform (that may beat the 5k budget of my colleague's platform).

We were using the F-scan back in uni, but I feel that is a bit too much for what I usually see in my practice.

I would appreciate it if any of you could give me any heads-up on something, I did go through the whole google search step but I don't really know what's generally accepted into our practice and what is just ad-scam. :bash:

Thank you in advance for your help and looking forward to hearing from you. You can answer here, PM me or e-mail me instead.

Thanks,
Georgia.

 

Are you getting this because people are asking for it, or are you getting it because of the information that it provides. You could get a Harris Mat and try to convince the people that it gives you the information that you need. You could also try and convince those people that you could get the same information by looking at the calluses on the bottom of their feet or the impression in the sock liner of the shoe. I can make the case that the impression in the sock liner is better than F-scan printout because the F-scan is just a couple of steps that may be influenced by the pain in the foot. The impression in the sock liner is the result of many, many more steps. (You do need to ask if they got the shoes second hand.)

A lot of "experts" practice without force platforms. If you know more biomechanics than the other local podiatrists you don't need a platform.

Eric

 

Interesting points Eric, but the impressions in a sock liner are not going to show influence of change, outcomes or increments of time and if the shoe is near new or extremely worn down sole, what then?

Georgia, why not look at trying to lease something or get a business loan, if your in Australia, you may find you can claim the GST back in this quarter, write the whole thing off this financial year(items under $20K) and interest rates are never going to be this low in our life time...l hope, now is the time to invest. But first its time to get an accountant and ask them these questions.

 

Hey guys, thanks for the reply.

Trying to convince people that visual gait observation without pedography works will just instantly drive them away from you to another colleague (tried and tested).

I know what you're saying and I agree, but being in private practice you do need to keep the patient happy. They ask for a foot scan (and they want to pay for it), you have to give them a foot scan, else they will get their foot scan, just somewhere else. And this has an effect to a practice's overall reputation, as no patients coming in means no chance to get happy patients.

Believe me, I have seen practices convincing patients that they absolutely need a foot scan for years and years and now the general view is that if the podiatrist doesn't conduct a foot scan then they're not as good. So it kind of forces all practices to provide foot scans just to be competitive (unprofessional, I know).

Regarding leasing etc unfortunately no such thing here.

The Harris mat won't work for me, unfortunately. I was thinking about the Podotech Elftman or the RSscan. I've already read some threads regarding this and the Podotech seems a saf, low budget choice for simple clinical non-research pedography.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply, appreciate it.

Georgia

 

Hi Georgia
I have the podotech elftman and find it works well and gives nice reports that I print out for patients. The video didn't synchronise very well with the actual phase of gait so I don't use that. Also I had a lot of problems with it crashing so now I have a separate computer not connected to Internet and dedicated only to the podotech and now I have no problems. Best would be to have an in-shoe system to analyse before and after orthotic intervention but my budget can't reach that far yet. Lucy