THREE GUYS AND A BETTER PEDICLE DRILL (Orthopedics This Week)
Garages and basements are iconic and sacred spaces in the history of technology. Ever since the September day in 1998 when the founders of Google set up workspace in Susan Wojcicki’s garage on Santa Margarita Avenue in Menlo Park, young men have pursued their disruptive technology dreams in just such spaces.
Three such young men are presently living and working in a basement and garage they have converted into a machine shop and laboratory, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Their goal is to create a new tool for spine surgery, a hand-held device that, containing both X-ray capabilities and a drill, would allow a surgeon to more quickly and more accurately than at present, insert pedicle screws into vertebra. Screw systems for the stabilization of spines have, in recent years, become common in spine surgery.
The concept first occurred to David Chang, M.D., a neurosurgeon. When Chang read an article in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press about MIT graduate and inventor Nicholas Pawley in about 2006, he looked him up. The two teamed up with a third—Simon Mehalck—whom they describe as being “from another planet” to create Chang’s idea.
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