Next week is VA Research Week, so this week officials from the Veterans Affairs Department were on Capitol Hill talking about past advances in medical technology and showing off some of their newest successes. The most grabbing one – literally – is the new DEKA arm, a cooperative project between the VA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Advances in arm prosthetics have lagged behind those for legs, which now feature complex processors designed to keep balance and better mimic natural gait. Replicating the complexity of fingers and wrist movement and simple grips requires an exponentially more complex piece of technology.

But the need is growing; VA officials said while in past wars only 3 percent of combat amputees lost part of an arm, in the current conflict it’s more than 22 percent.

The new eight-pound prosthetic features new fittings to better distribute the weight of the arm across an injured veteran’s body, wireless feeds to more quickly transmit commands to the fingertips, and finer control of the grip. Researchers boast that veterans currently testing the device can pick up a grape without crushing it, shake hands without squeezing too tight, and operate power tools.

“The power tools are always the ones that get them exited,” said researcher Steven Coulter.

Right now the research project only has six disabled veteran participants – the next step for the project is 10 clinical trials, four patient home trials and further testing of the arm’s battery life and motor control. The VA hopes to submit a final product to the Food and Drug Administration for approval by 2011, and start mass production then.

Click on the video below to see the arm in action (controlled by remote in this demonstration) and hear Coulter speak about its features. via Stars and strips

Dean Kamen showing off the Deka arm at TED

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