Zimmer Biomet (NYSE:ZBH) today demonstrated three new ZBEdge offerings connecting robotic and digital healthcare technology.
The Warsaw, Indiana-based medical device company started off by introducing its new OptiVu Mixed Reality Solutions platform, which will be used with Microsoft HoloLens smartglasses and three applications available this winter.
OptiVu Mixed Reality Apps
The first application employing mixed reality (a combination of virtual reality and augmented reality) is OptiVu Instrument Assembly, which uses image recognition to guide a user step-by-step through instrument assembly. The app is “designed to give the user confidence that each instrument was assembled correctly and help anticipate the next surgical step,” Global Robotics Director Stephen Bernous said.
Another application, OptiVu Patient Assessment, collects and stores data to track patient progress before and after surgery, measuring changes in shoulder range of motion, sit to stand, squat, and single-leg balance.
The third app, OptiVu Surgical Demo, will let clinicians share a mixed-reality experience with patients ahead of a procedure, helping them visualize and understand the process together.
“This application is designed to enable healthcare professionals to rapidly share information, better contextualize physician-patient conversations, and look to help patients make more informed decisions as it relates to their surgical experience,” Bernous said.
Mymobility’s new range-of-motion feature
Next up, Mymobility Product Manager Courtney Havens-Mitchell demonstrated a new range-of-motion feature to supplement assessments traditionally conducted during office visits. The Mymobility care management platform’s new feature measures range of motion using the cameras on a patient’s smartphone, giving the patient directions to complete the assessments at home and then sending results to the Mymobility clinician dashboard.
“Range of motion is often one of the most clinically important objective outcomes for orthopedic procedures representing the progress of rehabilitation and ability to return to functional activities,” Havens-Mitchell said. “…Tracking this progress can provide both encouragement and motivation to patients.”
Zimmer Biomet’s Rosa Hip system
Finally, Senior Product Manager Andrew Steiner discussed the Rosa Hip system, which received FDA 510(k) clearance in August. Rosa Hip is the fourth robotic system in Zimmer Biomet’s portfolio, allowing personalization for surgeons and their patients to plan procedures and successfully position components.
“Rosa relies on images taken with fluoroscopy mirroring the process many direct anterior surgeons are using already,” Steiner said. “An efficient dual-image-based algorithm with an auto landmarking feature orients Rosa in space, and intuitive on-screen graphics assist the surgeon in guiding the robotic arm to proper position. And with the trial panel feature, Rosa hip allows the surgeon to evaluate the best possible implant combination for each patient by providing real-time data on leg length and offset of the trial and final implant components.”
Rosa Hip can collect data during surgery that can be combined with pre- and post-op measurements collected by the Mymobilty app, allowing patients to share their data to help optimize care, he said.
Virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality are promising technologies in surgery. Spine surgery company NuVasive this week announced its upcoming virtual reality training module for the NuVasive X360 system, while startup OssoVR has developed a virtual reality surgical training and assessment platform and Medtronic has partnered with Surgical Theater to offer an augmented reality platform for cranial procedures.
