Why ScanMate?

Since our inception in 1985, QOL has produced the highest quality hand-crafted devices. But it’s taken until 2019 before we introduced digital scanning options to our range. So you might ask, why didn’t we look into it earlier? The truth is – we did. In fact since the mid 1990’s when CADCAM options really started to become commercially viable, we’d been investigating options and kept up to date with the latest technologies. But we never found anything that met our high standards…so we invented ScanMate.

ScanMate was primarily developed with a key challenge in mind. The big roadblock for us was always – how do we take a scan of the foot that stays true to our values on how to take a cast of the foot? We’ve always advocated for a non-weight bearing cast of the foot, with the subtalar joint in neutral and the midtarsal joint fully pronated. This gives the best calcaneal pitch, medial and lateral longitudinal arch contours and enables the podiatrist to accurately capture the anatomical forefoot to rearfoot relationship. We know this gives us a more comfortable orthotic and better clinical outcomes.

So the challenge for us was to develop something that achieved this and still allowed the podiatrist to be hands free to operate the scanner. We also wanted something that could be used with the patient prone or supine. After significant research and development, we’re proud of what we’ve developed.

The difference in scans we receive between using and not using ScanMate are like chalk and cheese.

The development of ScanMate was a key piece in the puzzle of QOL offering a digital product. So whilst it may seem like we’re late with digital scanning, the reason is we were waiting until we felt we could produce something and put the QOL name behind it.

If you’re interested in an obligation free trial, contact us using the form below.