SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — Officials from a tech startup at the University of Notre Dame have developed a prosthetic hand that they say would cost less than those currently on the market and require less training for amputees.

ProstheTech hopes to finish testing its myoelectric prosthetic hand — which works by using existing electrical signals in an amputee's muscles — by the end of this year.

The firm recently received $20,000 from Elevate Ventures, an entrepreneurial development advocacy organization, to finalize its prototype.

In order to reduce the amount of time an amputee has to practice with a prosthetist, Jose Montalvo, the chief executive officer, said ProstheTech's hand will use artificial intelligence technology that will allow the machine to quickly learn how the patient using the hand thinks and how their muscles typically react to stimuli.

As for the materials that'll be used, Montalvo said they're consistent with other prosthetics.

"We're using the most advanced materials we can find, carbon fiber, 3-D printing for the tips of the fingers, a special metal alloy for the junctions of the fingers and the cost is still not that high," Montalvo said. "I think companies charge a lot for their prosthetics because that's the norm. It's a product that you need to live ..., so they can just upcharge it as much as they want, but the materials cost is not that high."

In addition to the hand's customizable features, Montalvo said they are also developing software that will allow prosthetists and amputees to plug the hand into a computer for a tutorial on how to use it, which will further simplify the training process.

"We would train the prosthetists on how to repair the hand, but not on how to use it because it will be very simple to use," Montalvo said.

The company is headed by a four-man team, three of whom grew up outside the U.S. Born and raised in El Salvador, Montalvo said he thinks the three's international status have contributed to their interest in prosthetics. While attending Notre Dame for his electrical engineering degree, Montalvo learned that the current prosthetics on the market are too expensive for the majority of consumers around the world, and he hopes ProstheTech can fill the need for less-expensive alternatives.

"A lot of these third-world countries are very industrial countries, so there's big machinery and agricultural machinery, which are very dangerous," Montalvo said. "There's a good percentage of people who lose their hands due to work injuries."

Eric Schopmeyer, the operations manager at Transcend Orthotics and Prosthetics in South Bend, said their patients typically spend $10,000 to $30,000 for myoelectric hands, depending on the type of amputation.

For upper-extremity amputee patients, Brianna Anderson, a certified prosthetist and orthotist at Transcend, said there are two styles of prosthetics they recommend to patients, myoelectric or body-powered.

"Body-powered involves a system of cabling that usually works with a harness the patient wears over their shoulders, where their shoulder movements open and close their hand or elbow," Anderson said. "Myoelectric have sensors that go on the skin that read nerve impulses from the muscles which causes the arm to move."

ProstheTech's hand will respond to an amputee's nerve impulses with eight different sensors, accounting for specific patterns of electrical activity translating to 16 to 24 different movements.

While ProstheTech hopes to have a minimum completed product by the end of this year, Montalvo said they may choose to complete a few more iterations of the product depending on how the human trials go, and they plan on taking the hand to market at the end of 2020 at the latest.