Meet the new robotics startup, Monogram Orthopedics, and by-the-way, it’s crowd-funded

Monogram Orthopedics Poised to Disrupt Total Knee Arthroplasty Market, More than 5,000 Series B Investors Back the Company (Valdosta Daily Times)

Monogram operating theater and surgical robot for total knee replacement

Today, Monogram Orthopedics, the startup advancing the future of joint replacement surgery, announced it has crossed a five thousand Series B investor milestone on crowdfunding platform StartEngine. Aiming to personalize the $19.6B joint replacement market through artificial intelligence, robotics, and 3D printing, Monogram Orthopedics is targeting a $34M raise to scale and bring their technology to market. The company expects to kick off its unmatched personalized approach with its first total knee arthroplasty (“TKA”) implant FDA submission planned for later this year.

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Monogram operating theater and surgical robot for total knee replacement. (Photo: Business Wire)

To date, innovation in orthopedics has lagged behind many other surgical specialties. While the rise in personalized medicine has driven advances in numerous fields, progress in orthopedics remains sluggish, with standardized implants and procedures stubbornly persisting as the standard of care. Unfortunately, this standard in joint replacement surgery doesn’t always serve patients, with approximately 100,000 hip and knee replacement failures every year and 36 percent of patients regretting their procedure altogether. 1 Monogram believes that much of this dissatisfaction and many of these failures and surgical complications can be easily mitigated and are in fact unnecessary with technology advances, such as those they are developing.

Thanks to significant improvements in robotics, innovative new manufacturing techniques like 3D printing of medical-grade titanium alloys and new machine learning (AI) image processing techniques, opportunities to exploit technology and significantly improve patient quality of life are emerging. Fifty percent of knee replacements will be performed robotically by 2027, a fivefold increase in less than six years. 2 Interestingly, all joint replacement procedures using robotic assistance today continue to use “off-the-shelf” implants. A more personalized approach offers the potential to disrupt the orthopedics field. Monogram aims to do this with a “one-size fits none” model by offering patients an enhanced individualized fit, well suited for each patient’s individual needs.

“We started Monogram Orthopedics to build a completely different kind of orthopedics company, free of the constraints that many of the large companies face when trying to innovate,” said Dr. Doug Unis, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon, co-founder and chief medical officer, Monogram Orthopedics and Chief of Quality Improvement at Mount Sinai West. “We are poised to do what no other company has done in the total joint arthroplasty market before – harness technology to build truly personalized implants that fully tap into the power of intelligent robotics.”

Monogram Orthopedics’ proprietary approach to TKA surgeries will address major problems in joint replacement, including mechanical loosening, bone loss, dislocation, ease of revision and fracture. Using the Monogram software platform and product solution architecture, surgeons will be able to design optimized implants that improve stability and physiological loading.

The company’s research suggests that implants can be inserted into the patient’s anatomy with more precision and notable improvement. In a laboratory test at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, a procedure was performed benchmarking against a competitor’s technology, which is one of the most clinically and commercially successful knees on the market, and showed the competitive product had up to 630% more micromotion than the Monogram implant placed with their surgical robot. 3

Backed by a seasoned team of board-certified medical leaders and top technology talent from prestigious educational and medical institutions, Monogram Orthopedics includes executives, engineers, data scientists and advisors from Yale University, California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Mount Sinai Health System, Think Surgical Inc., Motional and the Orthopedics Institute for Children, among others.

The company’s crowdfunding campaign is currently underway on StartEngine to allow patients and caregivers to be active participants in the advancement of precision joint replacement surgeries.

More than 1 million knee replacement surgeries are done a year in the United States alone, a figure that is expected to grow to 3.5 million by 2030. 4 To date, the company has raised over $20M and is currently raising up to $34M in its active series-B round.

The proceeds will help commercialize technology that meets the massive need for knee replacement technology that is well suited for active patient lifestyles, with minimized risk for additional surgeries down the line. To invest in Monogram Orthopedics and shape the future of joint replacement surgery, visit https://www.startengine.com/monogram.

ABOUT MONOGRAM ORTHOPEDICS

Monogram Orthopedics offers a distinctive tech-driven vision for the future of orthopedic surgery: a robotic platform paired with personalized implants. Poised to be the first to market with an active milling navigated robot arm with 3D-printed, patient-optimized implants, Monogram will lead the orthopedic market to an era of improved surgical care for joint replacement patients. Monogram was founded by practicing Mount Sinai Hospital orthopedic surgeon, Douglas Unis, and is led by a team of experts in the field of surgical robotics and implant design. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas.

Sources

1. http://www.orthopaper.com/archives/2016/vol2issue2/PartA/Ortho-1-2-69.pdf

2. C. Pabinger, H. Lothaller, A. Geissler Utilization rates of knee-arthroplasty in OECD countries, Osteoarthr Cartil, 23 (10) (2015), pp. 1664-1673

Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS), Statistical Brief # 186 (2014), http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb186-Operating-Room-Procedures-United-States-2012.pdf, Accessed 16th Sep 2015

M. Cross, E. Smith, D. Hoy, S. Nolte, I. Ackerman, M. Fransen, et al. The global burden of hip and knee osteoarthritis: estimates from the global burden of disease 2010 study, Ann Rheum Dis, 73 (7) (2014), pp. 1323-1330

3. Monogram Orthopedics internal study

4. https://www.perceptionhealth.com/research/5-5-million-patients-trending-toward-knee-joint-replacement#:~:text=By%202030%2C%20total%20knee%20replacement,dramatic%20reduction%20of%20knee%20pain.

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