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Robot Wars Brewing In Orthopedics

Robotic-controlled surgical tools – led by market leader MAKO Surgical Inc. – are beginning to take root in the knee surgery market, at least in partial knees. Perhaps the truest measure of the potential of this market is the growing competition that MAKO is facing: just over the past five months, Blue Belt Technologies and Stanmore Implants Worldwide received FDA approval for rival robotic surgical systems.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then the orthopedics industry – at least in hip and knee replacement – hasn’t been the most robust breeding ground for innovation. Large joint replacement surgeries historically have offered success rates in the high 90s. Implant manufacturers have seen little point in fixing what isn’t broken, beyond incremental enhancements. Add a kind of ingrained conservatism that exists in surgery generally, and the result over the decades has been evolutionary tweaks in hip and knee implants – a shift from one type of material to another but not true, revolutionary change.

But change is coming. Over the past few years, knee implant manufactures have evolved their products in ways that are...

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