Copy to clipboard 
Xenco Medical focuses on improving the expensive, cumbersome and inefficient processes that typically come with traditional implant systems. Their SETx Technology portfolio has a Cervical Interbody System, Lumbar Interbody Systems for ALIF, PLIF and TLIF and a Pedicle Screw System.
In addition to its expanding surgical portfolio of spinal implant systems, the company has developed a bone graft substitute, a porous titanium foam implant, a holographic surgical simulation platform and a vending machine for implant tracking. We spoke with Founder and CEO Jason Haider to learn more about the company’s technologies and the greatest areas for advancement in orthopedics.
Why and how did you get into orthopedics?
For as long as I’ve been aware of the interdisciplinary nature of orthopedic device development and its capacity to bridge mechanical engineering, tissue engineering, materials science, computer science, biomaterial development, among other fields for the common cause of patient treatment, I’ve been captivated by it and committed to doing what I can to contribute to the growing body of orthopedic technologies. It’s breathtaking to think of the progress made since the early fixation devices by Malgaigne, Lambotte and Parkhill, and it’s immensely satisfying to work on technical problems that require bridging elements from disparate fields towards a clinical application.
What prompted you to found Xenco Medical in 2011?
The driving factor that prompted me to found Xenco Medical when I did was the rapid transformation of the healthcare sector in the wake of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. As the most sweeping change to our country’s healthcare sector since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, the ACA’s emphasis on measurable outcomes created favorable conditions for innovation-driven companies to enter and thrive in the surgical device space, as long as they could develop outcomes-based technologies that improved the performance of hospitals. Intending to build a patient-centric medical device company optimized for this new healthcare paradigm, I prioritized developing surgical devices that would also improve a hospital’s metrics with regard to the quality of care and outcomes.
What problems are you trying to solve with your current products and those in your pipeline?
As a company with an innovation-driven, outcomes-oriented thrust optimized for the value-based era of healthcare, we’ve remained committed to developing technologies of increasing complexity to address the entire spectrum of a patient’s surgical experience. All of our technologies share the common thread of value-based medicine.
In HoloMedX, this is most apparent in its ability to enhance a patient’s experience and understanding by allowing simultaneous holographic viewing while their surgeon simulates spine surgery using a reconstruction of their anatomy without the barrier of headgear. Beyond the unparalleled transparency of seeing your actual spinal anatomy in holographic space with your surgeon present, it allows for a profound understanding of a future surgery, which has been shown to translate into better outcomes.
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco found that patients exposed to insightful patient education bundles about their procedure rated both their physicians and hospitals higher after their surgeries than patients who were not exposed to these pre-operative educational interventions. This speaks volumes about the importance of pre-operative patient education. Being able to communicate the complexities of spine surgery through glasses-free holographic surgical simulation with HoloMedX enables a significant leap forward in a patient’s pre-operative understanding.
Similarly, our composite polymer spinal implant and instrument systems reduce the costs associated with transporting and processing reused surgical trays, reduce the risk of surgical site infection due to improperly sterilized instruments and increase healthcare facilities’ efficiency by streamlining inventory to single-use instruments with implants pre-attached. Our surgical vending machines bolster operational efficiency by allowing for remote traceability of instruments and implants and analytics on usage. Our portfolio of injection-molded, titanium foam interbodies is designed to be biomimetic for the targeted purpose of improving surgical outcomes by promoting vascularization throughout the entire structure of each implant and offering a modulus of elasticity similar to cancellous bone.
Jason Haider of Xenco Medical demonstrates the company’s vending machine for spine implants.
What do you see as the greatest opportunities and challenges for spine companies in the next 10 to 20 years?
The next 10 and 20 years offer a deep set of opportunities and thrilling challenges for spine companies due to the rapid pace of bench-level advancements being made in the life sciences, particularly in genomics, as well as the growing potential uses for artificial intelligence not only in intraoperative applications but in the manufacturing of spinal implants, as well.
In the next 10 years—FDA’s release of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning Software as a Medical Device Action Plan in January of this year is a testament to the inevitable ubiquity of AI in medical software applications over the coming years. There will also be increased opportunities by spine companies to employ AI and machine learning in manufacturing applications such as the use of multi-material, AI-enabled 3D-printing platforms by companies like Inkbit, which uses machine vision to self-correct during the manufacturing of each structure.
On the 20-year scale—the opportunity and thrilling challenge will be whether it will be feasible to harness the rapid advancements being made in CRISPR technology to introduce gene-editing for the treatment of spinal disorders. Considering it was only last year when the first patients received CRISPR-Cas9 gene therapy in a clinical trial to treat the inherited blindness disorder of Leber’s congenital amaurosis 10, it will take considerable effort and patience to translate the transformative potential of CRISPR technology into standardized, non-experimental therapies over the next 20 years.
What excites you most about the future of orthopedics?
On a more immediate scale, having developed the first glasses-free holographic surgical simulation platform, it will be exciting to see how our advancements in medical holography ramify beyond our application and influence how surgical visualization is experienced moving forward. By removing the barrier of headgear and allowing for the instant translation of DICOM data into an interactive holographic reconstruction, HoloMedX offers a template for collaborative autostereoscopic visualization in fields extending beyond spine surgery.
Looking slightly further ahead, I’m excited about the increasing potential of precision medicine in orthopedic interventions. With significant promise in diagnostic and surgical technologies as well as personalized infection management, the genomic granularity that precision medicine offers has the potential to drive truly patient-specific treatment decisions. On a longer timescale, as I mentioned earlier, I’m excited to see how the promise and potential of CRISPR technology manifests itself in the treatment of orthopedic disorders over the next 20 years.
What is the best advice you’ve received?
The best advice I’ve received was from a math professor named Steven Strogatz, who implored our class to continually search for and revel in the unifying patterns across disciplines. The joy of discovery and pursuit of elegant solutions that he impressed on us continues to find its way into my thinking.
What advice do you have for future leaders in the orthopedic industry?
I would recommend building a deep technical knowledge that includes computer science and making time to supplement this background with bench-level developments that emerge each year. We’ve reached a point in device development where knowledge across disciplines is inextricably linked, and navigating the orthopedic industry in the future will require fluency in multiple fields.
