The Future of Orthopedics Is Connectivity
Everything is connected, your cell phone connects to your computer, your car, even your home. Orthopedic manufacturers currently have the technology, but much of it exists in isolation. That’s going to change.
At the 2019 American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons (AAHKS) conference in Dallas, Texas, a number of the big names in orthopedics released promotional videos of “digital ecosystem” concepts. This release did not come as a surprise to Pierrepont who told OTW, “Companies that aren’t doing this are going to get left behind.”
A connected platform is a reality for Corin. Pierrepont emphasized, “CorinConnect is live. The surgeon can log on and utilize it. The other companies are talking about a vision of connected systems, connected technology, but right now it’s still conceptual. There is nothing that exists for the surgeon to go and do that. It’s a vision they are talking about.”
Dr. Shimmin shared Pierrepont’s opinion, “None of the big industry players…they’re nowhere near it.”
Sequencing CorinConnect
Pierrepont explained the sequence with which the team built CorinConnect, “The one that came first was the preoperative planning, that was the OPS hip platform. That was my background. That’s where it started in Australia. We then soon after developed a technology for the postoperative analysis, OPSReView. During the development stages, we were actively looking into adding more technologies that contribute to the orthopedic experience.”
He continued, “We started working on the more elements, incorporating a new patient management platform, CorinRPM, which pre-operatively profiles the patient so we can get an understanding of the factors that led to the surgery. And the same application is then used to collect key post-operative surveys to quantify patient outcomes. The next step was to compile all this data we’re collecting into a system that supports analysis. We’ve been working on that for several years.”
One key piece to this platform was unlocked when Corin acquired OMNI. Pierrepont said, “Finally the huge missing piece for us, which is now the premier piece, is the robotics. The intraoperative piece. With the OMNI acquisition, that was when we were able to fill the bucket in the middle, which is the intraoperative execution of the surgery with all the information that comes intraoperatively.”
At the core of CorinConnect lies the CorinRegistry. This is where all the information from the technologies flow. It holds the clinical information for trend analysis and review. Pierrepont explained, “The registry is the key to processing all this data we’re collecting. The registry is our cloud-based database which holds all of this rich information, ready to be presented back to the surgeon.”
Elani Hamman, a software manager for Corin, joined in 2018. Her team has been working on connecting Corin’s different medical device technologies across the board.
Hamman’s team has been excited about the development, “By integrating OPSInsight, the interactive planning element of OPS, into CorinConnect, that was the first implementation of connectivity. So that was really exciting for us to be able to see the information flow into our CorinRegistry and look at the actionable data coming through.”
Data Is the Foundation for the Future
Hamman is looking forward to the future capabilities of the CorinRegistry. Hamman said, “CorinRegistry is my favorite feature of CorinConnect, having that data and all the insights available in a single platform…in real time.”
Hamman continued, “The CorinRegistry is really that data warehouse. It’s the combination of all our clinical data that we’ve been able to capture from the connected technologies. Looking at what we’re building now, we’re almost setting up the foundation pieces of having the data model and well-defined data. [T]his is going to be hugely important for us moving forward as we look at data analytics and metrics…machine learning…[and] transfer learning.”
From a meeting on the Sydney harbor to offices around the globe, Corin is moving into the future.
Hamman said, “We’re really moving from a manufacturing company to a technology-based company. It’s really exciting to be a part of.”
