Robin Young • Thu, November 20th, 2014
The companies who submitted winning technologies were: 109 Design; Aesculap, Inc.; Medacta International SA; Medtronic, Inc.; NLT SPINE; SafeRay Spine, LLC; SafeWire, LLC; Spinologics, Inc.; Vital 5, LLC; Whale Imaging, Inc. and ZipLine Medical, Inc.
This year’s scores included a virtual tie so we have 11 wining companies and, we note, a healthy and welcome plurality of young innovative companies.
This annual award rewards inventors, engineering teams, surgeons and their companies who’ve created the most innovative, enduring and practical products in 2014 to treat back pain. To win the Orthopedics This Week Best New Technology Award for spine care, a new technology must meet the following criteria:
- Be creative and innovative.
- Have long term significance to the problem of treating the diseases of the spine. Does this technology have staying power?
- Solve a clinical problem. To what extent does this technology solve a current clinical problem or problem that is inadequately solved today?
- Does it have the potential to improve standard of care?
- Is it cost effective?
- I would use it.
Our panel of surgeons score every submission on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being the highest score) for each of the above criteria.
We and our panel of surgeons were impressed that inventors—despite ever growing hurdles to innovation and entrepreneurism in spine—still managed to create a solid group of more than 40 new products to submit for the 2014 Orthopedics This Week Spine Technology Awards.
We offer our thanks and deep appreciation to the engineering teams, surgeon inventors and the following companies for submitting their best ideas this year:
