2018
Firm’s implant gets thumbs up at awards
The winner of this year’s InterTrade Ireland Seedcorn competition, NUIG/UCC spin-out company Loci Orthopaedics, is a medtech company with an ambitious agenda — to disrupt the €550m thumb joint surgery market.
The winner of this year’s InterTrade Ireland Seedcorn competition, Loci Orthopaedics, is a medtech company with an ambitious agenda — to disrupt the €550m thumb joint surgery market.
It plans to do so with a revolutionary 21st-century solution.
“We have used cutting-edge 3D CT technology to design an implant which is the first that can fully mimic the natural but complex movements of the thumb,” said company co-founder Dr Brendan Boland, who plans to make this implant, called the ‘InDx’, as widely used globally as hips, knees, and shoulder joint replacements.
Dr Boland says that at present the treatment options for the 40 million sufferers of basal thumb joint arthritis in the EU and the US include an implant with a 40% failure rate, or a surgical procedure which was developed in the 1950s and which results in a significant loss of hand function.
“The prize money will prove invaluable in supporting our orthopaedic joint implant ‘InDx’ at such a crucial stage in its development and will allow us to invest in securing additional personnel and provide further support for expansion,” said Dr Boland.
Future plans for Loci Orthopaedics include ongoing R&D, focusing on other joint implants to increase the product portfolio.
Read here how Loci Orthopaedics plans to revolutionise the thumb joint surgery market, by Trish Dromey in the Irish Examiner