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In January, joint replacement implant manufacturer GO Implants signed a worldwide agreement with PeekMed, developer of 3D pre-operative digital planning tools, to promote and sell PeekMed’s technology through its international direct and indirect sales network. GO Implants is the parent company of the GO Easy brand of products.
GO Easy offers joint replacement implants and instrumentation from Germany with easy surgical techniques and direct marketing for reduced cost and high value. They are dedicated to large joint replacement, with EasyHip and EasyKnee products focusing on clinically proven implant designs.
PeekMed’s 3D pre-operative planning software was designed to help surgeons properly identify a problem with a patient and then measure, template and simulate different solutions for the best possible outcome. The software leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to not only provide accurate planning for each patient, but also learning and improving over time as more surgeries and data are entered.
“It’s really good to have this collaboration where we will be reaching hard marketings that would otherwise be challenging for us, but at the same time we are providing GO Easy with a product that allows their customers to better prepare for the procedure and providing a value-add for that customer,” said João Pedro Ribeiro, CEO and Co-Founder of the Portugal-based PeekMed.
Streamlining Surgical Procedures
Together, the partnership enables surgeons using GO Easy products to trial different sizes and solutions on a virtual platform rather than in-procedure and then have the proper inventory available for the operation. It’s a combined effort that offers physicians a means for efficient, end-to-end joint replacement planning and operating.
The simple and instantaneous surgical planning will reduce many of the existing hurdles to effective joint replacement, said Richard Zeissig, Managing Director of GO Easy.
“Ultimately for the surgeon, it will be just as easy as displaying a trip on Google Maps — that’s our objective,” he said.
The partnership came about organically, as Zeissig and Ribeiro knew each other for several years from industry interactions and saw an opportunity to collaborate.
“Typically for implant manufacturers, they ask the surgeon to provide them with the x-ray or CT scan, and then they have an engineer in the back office or a product specialist doing the planning for the surgeon,” Ribeiro said. “Then it’s almost like a ping-pong game where the engineer does the planning and sends it back to the surgeon to approve, but if the surgeon wants to change something, it gets back to the engineer to update it until they reach a point where everyone agrees.”
The Go Easy/PeekMed partnership eliminates the need to have this back-and-forth scenario built into the costs. Planning is completed in a matter of seconds automatically by the software, and the surgeon is able to edit, change and approve, and then it is sent to the product engineer.
“It’s a more conscientious decision that the surgeon is taking and overall, it really streamlines the logistics of it,” Zeissig said. “Smaller hospitals that don’t have their own inventory are able to foresee what implants they require and then ensure that the right inventory is on hand.”
GO Easy and PeekMed’s partnership not only fills a gap in the market, but also provides mutual benefit to their own organizations. By leveraging GO Easy’s network, PeekMed ramps up their recognition in the marketplace; likewise, GO Easy benefits from being able to package a leading-edge technology with their devices to simplify and improve outcomes for surgeons and patients. This type of collaboration between small device and technology players is expected to continue in orthopedics as companies seek to build recognition in the space.
The Future of Preoperative Planning
Being able to analyze the outcome of all planned procedures to find the best approach for total knee or hip replacements is the future role of AI in preoperative planning, Ribeiro said. AI’s role is not only to help the surgeon with the planning for the upcoming case, but also to learn over time from all cases to improve outcomes.
“Today we rely a lot on scientific papers or articles where surgeons have studied a specific way and a specific method to do it, but it’s really fixed to 100 cases or 1,000 cases,” Ribeiro said. “But if it would be possible to have 1 million surgeries performed by half a million surgeons, then you would be able to analyze all of that and come up with the best plan for doing a total knee replacement.”
The benefits of utilizing AI as part of the planning software span the patient’s journey before, during and after the surgery. Data collected across countless cases as the program evolves can be leveraged to model more successful outcomes, but also, can be used as a tool to involve the patient in their own care.
“With more data coming from all sorts of different sources to drive this AI, you can really have the preoperative planning integrated with the postoperative planning, and with that, you can set patient-specific expectations like pain management and rehabilitation protocols,” Zeissig said. “That’s very important for the patient to feel that this data is helping them also; it’s not just something for the surgeon and the industry.”
Today’s conventional preoperative planning doesn’t involve the patient very much, but with PeekMed’s technology, it’s easy to instantly generate 3D data to show the patient an image of what the implant will look like after placement.
The Roll-Out
GO Easy and PeekMed are starting with knee replacements in 2021, followed by hip replacement technology planned for 2022. They will focus first on Southern Europe, Germany and Latin America.
The partnership’s foundation relies on trust and mutual benefit. For GO Easy and PeekMed, the fit was right.
“We’re completely different organizations — we couldn’t be more different,” Zeissig said. “They’re software developers and we’re all about heavy metal manufacturing and sales. We’re really on two separate planets, actually, but complementary.”
