Van Phillips

Van Phillips (born 1954) is an American inventor of prosthetics.

He is known for the Flex-Foot brand of artificial foot and limbs that he created, and for his charity work for amputees.

An amputee himself, having lost a leg below the knee at age 21, Phillips was motivated by the limitations of then-existing artificial limbs to attend the Northwestern University Medical School Prosthetic-Orthotic Center.

After graduation, he worked as a biomedical design engineer at the University of Utah before starting his own company, Flex-Foot Incorporated in 1984.

Phillips ultimately created a workable artificial foot made from carbon graphite.

Unlike all previous prostheses, it stored kinetic energy from the wearer's steps as potential energy, like a spring, allowing the wearer to run and jump.

A prosthetic foot that he created, the Flex-Foot Cheetah, is used by double-amputee and Paralympics gold-medalist Oscar Pistorius, and about 90 percent of Paralympics participants use a variation of the original Flex-Foot design, as well as thousands of people around the world.

In 1998 he received the Brian Blatchford Memorial Prize from the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics.

In 1999 he established Second Wind, a non-profit organization to provide inexpensive and resistant prostheses to amputees around the world, and is now working to create a prosthetic leg for land mine victims in developing countries.

Phillips sold Flex-Foot to Össur in 2000, which continues to manufacture the artificial foot.