Is This the Uber of Spine Surgery?

You could call it the Uber of spine surgery. Xenco Medical recently debuted a smartphone app to speed delivery of the company’s spinal implants and sterile, disposable surgical instruments to the operating room. The San Diego startup’s TraumaGPS app allows a surgeon to notify a Xenco technician of an upcoming procedure. The technician delivers a variety of the company’s implants and instruments, and works with the surgeon to determine which will be needed for a particular patient, explained Xenco founder and CEO Jason Haider. Sterilization of metal instruments can delay surgery for hours. “It’s a very cumbersome process and it’s very time-consuming for the hospitals,” Haider said. “The implants are carried on that tray for hundreds of procedures until that size is used. Even if they haven’t’ been used, they have to undergo sterilization every time.” Using Xenco’s fiberglass-reinforced, injection-molded, polyetheretherketone (PEEK) instruments eliminates the need for in-hospital sterilization, and TraumaGPS can further reduce delays for trauma surgery, allowing for more efficient use of the OR, according to Haider. “We can optimize it one step further and that is to let you know exactly when they’re going to arrive so you can get the patients ready and you’ll save another hour,” he said. “That was the idea behind the app. It was to capitalize on the surgery-ready quality of our system.” To save hospitals on disposal costs, Xenco contracts w...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Orthopedics Digital Health Source Type: news