The VGK is manufactured in the UK by Orthomobility Company. That’s how the company’s founder and VGK inventor Jacob Boender, who is an expert prosthetist and engineer, describes the story of its construction and development:
Well, working in the NHS in the UK, we see patients both rich and poor, but once in the need of a good knee joint, their differences are no longer so large: the human amputee-body needs proper equipment to walk on, and that is priceless. There is no such thing as having less money so a lesser product is good enough because of that. Needs are independent of wealth, but dependent on humanity.
After my design work with an earlier hydraulic knee, I got more ideas to include more answers to patient need, especially adding safety in down slope walking, adding features to being able to master speed-walking, combatting problems associated with oil heating up in the typical hydraulic device, allowing the knee to bend to the maximum amount in kneeling down (socket permitting), providing soft support on the knee cap when kneeling, and an aesthetic pleasing appearance…
That took a lot of convincing with funding bodies, as the general trend is that amputees only need a knee joint, and there are already enough on the market. Try to convince funding people with no clue what it is like living with an above knee amputation, if I as a prosthetist already found flaws in my understanding!
Lack of funding meant that family and partner had to make their sacrifices and had to earn other means to keep the family boat floating over the last years of final product development. Naturally this caused strain, but also the determination to get out of the cocoon and fly out like a butterfly.
So with support of amputees who helped out in assessing the prototypes, we arrived at a specification that people nowadays call very spontaneously a very good knee, and then they ask, by the way how do you call this knee?
Very Good Knee!