The motorised digits let amputees perform everyday tasks such as using a knife and fork, tying a tie, typing on a keyboard or playing computer games.
Researchers at Touch Bionics in Livingston said their breakthrough could help patients suffering the loss of up to five missing digits, whether from birth or through an injury later in life.
An estimated 52,000 people in the EU are missing part of a hand, with around 1.2 million partial amputees worldwide.
Phil Newman, the West Lothian firm’s marketing director, said the invention – named ProDigits – would empower a group who were previously given little help.
He said: “The ProDigits provide a powered device with a grip and it has returned these people to a level of functionality and independence.
“There has been no solution like this for the partial hand amputee community. It is supporting a community that has never had support before.”
The new device, costing between £35,000 and £45,000 per patient, is guided by sensors that detect muscle movements on the remaining fingers or palm. Alternatively, they can be driven by signals on a touch-sensitive pad that registers contact from the next finger along from the device.
Pressure sensors on the pad are linked to a “stall” feature, causing the hand to stop when it closes around an object so as to avoid crushing it. This feature allows people to drink from glasses without breaking them.
Former concert pianist Maria Antonia Iglesias, a 42-year-old from near Barcelona, lost her left hand and all the fingers on her right hand after a serious illness in 2003.
Last year, however, the Spanish national health service paid for her to visit Scotland to have a ProDigits prototype fitted.
She said the effect was “like a dream”, adding: “Even a simple thing like holding and lifting a glass of water was impossible before, but with ProDigits I can do it easily.”
Ms Iglesias is also able, with the aid of a passive silicone prosthetic hand on her other arm, to play some pieces on the piano again for the first time since her illness.
The bionic men and women
The world’s first complete bionic arm was fitted in 1998 by a team at Strathclyde University and Edinburgh’s Princess Margaret Rose Hospital. The patient, Robert Campbell Aird, died earlier
this year.
Strathclyde University researcher Bill Spence won the prestigious George Murdoch medal for his work on a bionic leg fitted to an African amputee in 1999. The hinged design offered new hope to landmine victims.
In 2006 West Lothian firm Touch Bionics invented the bionic hand, designed by NHS worker David Gow and unveiled in time to pre-empt researchers in the US, who had been trying for a similar breakthrough.
Retired welder Donald McKillop, from Kilmarnock, was among the first to be fitted with the new technology which has since been used on more than 500 patients worldwide.
The life sciences industry in Scotland generates nearly £3 billion each year.
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