LifeMOD and Smith & Nephew: The JOURNEY Knee
Client:
Smith & Nephew, Inc.
Business:
Orthopaedic device maker
Challenge:
Smith & Nephew's engineering team had a specific goal: distinguish the company in the orthopaedic implant marketplace, particularly the area of total knee replacement (TKR). They faced a formidable challenge. The knee is one of the least understood joints in the body, with issues of paradoxical motion, lateral pivot, and lack of anterior stability. Traditional design processes, including physical prototypes, are costly and time-consuming; yet taking risks with a new design could open the door to liability problems. In this highly regulated field, implant designs must also meet FDA requirements.
Solution:
The Smith & Nephew team implemented LifeMOD/KneeSIM™ at the beginning of the project and created a new strategy to explore knee motion through virtual simulations. LifeMOD/KneeSIM replicated the laboratory testing process and enabled designers, in the same time frame as their standard design cycle, to increase the number of design iterations from three to 56. Taking concepts from surgeons and exhaustive measurements from the simulation, the Smith & Nephew team learned more and more about the complexities of the knee and focused on ways to make their design perform more like a natural knee. Consequently, Smith & Nephew engineers were able to match a key performance characteristic, tibial rotation, with a pure 3D contoured surface as found in the human knee while still achieving excellent wear and durability.
Value:
Smith & Nephew’s innovative JOURNEY Bi-Cruciate Stabilized Knee System has revolutionized TKR performance. Smith & Nephew presented the new design at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, considered the “Super Bowl” of orthopaedics. There, they were awarded Best-of-Show by Wachovia Capital, a leading investment firm that monitors the medical sector. The success of the virtual simulation approach has led the Cleveland Clinic’s Orthopaedic Research Lab, one of the world’s leading orthopaedic clearinghouses, to adopt LifeMOD/KneeSIM for a new level of performance testing in their benchmark reports to the FDA, surgeons, and other orthopaedic device makers.
Smith & Nephew are poised to continue to race ahead in innovation. Due to their radically faster virtual product development cycles, Smith & Nephew have increased their design output by a factor of 25 and repositioned themselves as the leader in the TKR industry.
Read the full newsletter story.
Smith & Nephew are poised to continue to race ahead in innovation. Due to their radically faster virtual product development cycles, Smith & Nephew have increased their design output by a factor of 25 and repositioned themselves as the leader in the TKR industry.
Read the full newsletter story.