Medical Related
Conformis
Providing Patient-Specific Knee Replacement Technology
Medical Related
Conformis
Providing Patient-Specific Knee Replacement Technology
219
Patent References to IEEE
$167M
Capital Investments
219
Patent References to IEEE
$167M
Capital Investments
Conformis claims to sell the only “truly patient-specific total knee replacement” — individually sized and shaped, or customized, to fit each patient's unique anatomy.
According to their website, “Conformis knee replacements are designed to match every aspect of your natural knee. The goal of any knee replacement is to be pain-free, restore natural motion, and for patients to return to their everyday activities.”26
In 2013, Conformis received $167 million in funding to develop the custom knee replacements.27 In October 2019, they signed a $30 million licensing deal with Stryker; $14 million is to license Conformis’ patient-specific instrumentation for use with Stryker’s Triathlon total knee replacement system and $16 million to develop a new patient-specific knee replacement system to be sold under the Stryker name.28
Although Conformis has hundreds of patents, the patents included in this study are related to the Conformis patient-specific knee products (iUni, iDUO, and iTotal Knee Replacement Systems).29 These patents are very highly cited, and as a collection are cited about six times as often as expected (average citation index of 6.15). The 45 patents analyzed also contain 219 references to IEEE journals and conferences (average of 4.86 IEEE references per patent), which is rather high given that medical devices are not thought of as a core area for IEEE.
Frequently Referenced IEEE Publications
The Conformis patents frequently reference influential articles from the below IEEE publications.
26 Conformis Website https://www.conformis.com/ Last accessed June 9, 2020 27 Conformis Website https://www.conformis.com/about-conformis/news/conformis-achieves-significant-funding-milestone-with-167-7-million-in-series-e-financing/ Last accessed June 9, 2020 28 Perriello, Brad (2019) "Stryker inks $30m deal with Conformis" MassDevice.com, October 1, 2019. https://www.massdevice.com/stryker-inks-30m-licensing-deal-with-conformis/ Last accessed June 9, 2020. 29 Conformis Website https://www.conformis.com/patents/ Last accessed June 9, 2020