Technologies playing major roles in the latest innovations include AI, robotics, advanced materials, and 3D printing.
By Mark Shortt
The medical industry today is benefiting from technology innovations capable of achieving better surgical outcomes, as well as earlier detection and prevention of serious illnesses, including cancer.
In the surgical realm, AI-enabled surgical planning and GPS surgical navigation systems are making it possible to provide smarter, more personalized orthopedic care. While offering surgical teams more intuitive and efficient operation, they’re also helping them improve the accuracy of implant placements and joint replacements.
When planning for joint replacement procedures, surgeons have always had to assess various factors (including implant sizing and alignment, as well as soft-tissue balance), weighing them against each other and making trade-offs to deliver what they believe are the best possible outcomes. Today, escalating demand for more personalized orthopedic care is increasing the number of variables that surgeons need to assess, making their decision-making process even more complicated.
One company that is addressing this challenge is Gainesville, Florida-based Advita Ortho. The medical technology company recently patented an AI-enabled technology that is reported to “help surgeons focus on the clinical factors that matter most in joint replacement procedures.” Instead of treating all parameters equally, it uses a weight-based algorithm to help prioritize different factors based on patient anatomy and surgeon preference, the company said in a release.
“This patent represents an important step in our journey toward smarter surgical planning,” said Laurent Angibaud, senior vice president of advanced surgical technologies at Advita Ortho, in a statement. “Surgeons already make nuanced decisions based on experience and philosophy. Our goal is to support that thinking with intelligent tools that adapt to the surgeon, the patient, and the procedure, while preserving clinical control.”
Technology innovation is also evident in a variety of medical products beyond surgery. Medical device maker iotaMotion received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance recently for expanded pediatric use of its robotic-assisted cochlear implant insertion system.
The iotaSOFT system, cleared for use in patients four years of age and older, is “designed to help preserve delicate cochlear structures, a consideration that is often central to decision-making,” according to a release from iotaMotion. It achieves this by standardizing one of the most delicate and critical steps of cochlear implant surgery, enabling “precise and controlled electrode array insertion,” the company said in the release.
Contract manufacturers today are employing a wide variety of precision manufacturing processes—including injection molding, machining, coating, sheet metal fabricating, stamping, spring and wire forming, and PCB assembly, to name a few—to produce parts for medical and healthcare-adjacent applications. In addition to AI and robotics, technologies that are playing key roles in the latest and most impactful innovations include software, advanced materials, electronics, and 3D printing.
One innovation that combines AI, 3D printing, and advanced materials is a patient-specific spinal implant produced by Nivalon Medical Technologies. In a January release, Nivalon revealed that the motion-preserving implant was “built entirely without metal, using AI-driven design and advanced ceramic 3D printing.”
According to Nivalon, the device combines a proprietary zirconia-toughened alumina (ZTA) ceramic architecture that behaves like bone, with a flexible elastomeric core to mimic natural spinal motion. The combination is said to create “a new category of spinal implant engineered to match both human anatomy and natural biomechanics.”
“Unlike traditional implants manufactured in fixed sizes and made from metal alloys, Nivalon’s implant is digitally designed directly from each patient’s CT data and 3D printed to precisely match their unique anatomy,” the release stated. “The result is a bone-like ceramic structure that eliminates metal-related complications, such as corrosion, ion release, stiffness mismatch, and imaging interference, while preserving natural spinal motion.”
The platform is reported to have undergone extensive, independent pre-clinical validation through biomechanical, mechanical, biological, and anatomical testing. Testing was conducted at the University of South Florida (USF) and the University of Connecticut Institute of Materials Science (UConn IMS), according to the release.
The first-in-human procedures are planned for 2026. One of the patients is expected to be Nivalon Medical Technologies Co-founder and CEO, Todd Hodrinsky.
“We were trying to treat a living biological structure with industrial metal hardware that was never designed to behave like bone or properly follow natural spinal motion,” Hodrinsky said in the release. “We knew we could engineer something fundamentally better.”
With myriad medical products either on the market or in development today, device makers and OEMs across the industry are keeping contract manufacturers busy. A wide range of design and manufacturing processes are needed to bring these different products to market. Some products require several processes, others require fewer.
Regardless of how many processes any given product requires, it’s essential to have the capabilities and foresight to integrate complementary technologies into the product design, development, and manufacturing cycles, from conception to launch. The CEO of Freudenberg Medical, a provider of hydrophilic coatings for medical devices, explained why.
“Hydrophilic coatings and device design must work in perfect harmony to deliver optimal performance, yet the industry has traditionally approached them as separate disciplines,” said Freudenberg Medical CEO Michael McGee, in a release highlighting the benefits of customizing its newly released hydrophilic coating. “As a uniquely integrated technical partner, we enable customers to move faster, with less risk and greater confidence, by combining product design, advanced materials, precision coatings, and application expertise for seamless development, scale-up, and launch.”