ACTIVITIES :: eTen :: Projects :: Projects of the Month :: Orthosim
June 2006 Project of the Month: Orthosim
Issues being addressed
Each year more than 600,000 knee, hip and spine surgical interventions requiring surgical implants are performed in Europe. A considerable amount of them are due to failures that could be prevented with a better preoperative analysis such as the one proposed by orthoSIM.
With this service, a surgeon or implant engineer can effectively call on the expertise of the best biomechanical models in any field of orthopaedic surgery, where simulation can offer new insights for patient care.
It targets three basic stakeholders in the health sector:
- It offers to orthopaedic surgeons scientifically validated models for clinical simulation of customized cases.
- It offers to implant manufacturers a tool to evaluate new product concepts without costly procedures.
- It offers to students and researchers a relevant and accessible tool for learning and investigating.
Objectives of the project
The orthoSIM project provides a simulation service for orthopaedic surgery, for virtual preoperative analyses of the behaviour of an orthopaedic implant after implantation in a patient. .
The main goal of orthoSIM is to validate the potential market at European scale for introducing this new service concept, aimed at both the health community and the implant industry.
The objectives of the market validation are to identify the specific market stakeholders in each of the deployment countries; adapt the service interface to the local characteristics and test the user responses in form of “warm tests” for clinicians and implant designers.
Since users are in this case no direct purchasers of the system, “cold tests” have been envisioned to check for the buy-channel specifities in each country.
Furthermore, since business development is fully based on the integration of new implants and new models into the system, additional “integration tests” are planned to test this problematic and develop standard integration protocols.
After analysis of the market tests, a business plan will be developed as part of the overall plan for complete market deployment.
Services
The services provided by orthoSIM are the following:
- Simulation services. The possibility to simulate and visualize a personalised instrumented human joint in different situations, without risk for the patient. Additionally, a database of clinical cases will help users acquire better skills and understanding of the biomechanical behaviour of the instrumented human joints.
- Integration services. New implants and new validated models can be integrated into the orthoSIM platform service to make them available to any user.
- Promotion services. Many visitors with a clear cut professional profile will be attracted by the portal. orthoSIM will offer ‘on-line’ advertisement services to interested companies.
Achievements
Market analysis has been done in the five participating countries: Spain, France, Germany, Czech Republic and Poland. A valuable contact list has been elaborated for dissemination actions.
A “service portal” and a “simulation portal” have been successfully set up, where a powerful lumbar spine model is now connected to the internet. Integration tests are in progress with a cervical spine model and a hip model.
The simulation portal has been improved after usability testing by independent experts. Presentation material, demos and training material has been developed to help the partners carry out the market validation tasks.
Two big workshops have been organised in Valencia and Paris, with very positive response from users (surgeons and implant designers) and potential prescribers (health administrations).
A number of warm tests have been performed in Spain and France. The agenda for the cold tests has been arranged and visits are already planned to potential purchasers, resellers and prescribers in all participating countries. Relevant stakeholders in the public administrations and clinical software vendors have been targeted as well.
Preliminary impressions show interest in the users, but also a clear desire to increase the number of implants available and the latest surgical techniques and innovations. All this will require an important improvement work before and during service deployment.
Expected benefits by the end of the project
The forthcoming telematic service will provide a clinical added value, with the following benefits:
- Better pre-operative assessment for orthopaedic surgeons.
- Better health care for patients (less failures and less risks).
- Reduction of sanitary expenditure (the precise amount will be estimated).
- Reduction of development costs for implant manufacturers (less time-to-market; more efficient products).
- New opportunities for implant manufacturing SMEs (a way to differentiation).
- New opportunities for research labs (a way to make knowledge accessible to others).
- New opportunities for e-learning and training of junior surgeons.
The partners
Reference Data
Project's website: http://www.orthosim.com
Simulation's portal: http://www.mywebspine.com
Contract Type: Market Validation
Start Date: June 2005
End Date: December 2006
Duration: 18 Months
Contact: info@orthosim.com
