Pacific Research Laboratories, the parent company to Sawbones and Numalogics, a subsidiary of Spinologics, have partnered to develop computational modelling and simulation software applications for the orthopaedic medical device industry.
In a competitive space, orthopaedic medical device manufacturers look to bring products to market in a more efficient way. Computational modelling and simulation allow engineers to create and test devices in a virtual world and ultimately speed up the research and development process.
Sawbones supplies bone surrogate materials to the orthopaedic industry and is consistently used to perform bench tests on new devices. With the new simulation software, testing with Sawbones will be easier to do in a fast-paced virtual environment.
Amy Posch, design engineer at Sawbones said: “Sawbones strives to offer the most comprehensive, easy to use products that consistently simulate bone characteristics for physical testing. By adding computational simulation to our biomechanical test line, customers will be able to optimise device designs quicker and more efficiently.”
With Sawbones support, Numalogics aims to develop the most accurate computer models of bone surrogate materials in the industry and integrate these models into user friendly software applications. Numalogics is one of the first companies in the world to fully automate and democratise computer simulation for the medical device industry.
Eric Gaudreau, president of Numalogics, said: “Computer modelling and simulation is gaining a tremendous amount of adoption amongst R&D teams. It helps bring their product innovations to market faster. The reliability and credibility of virtual models has gained wide acceptance. While we see an opportunity for all orthopaedic device companies to benefit from our apps, we believe that there is a special need for the small and medium size companies. Unfortunately, they don’t have the resources to hire dedicated simulation experts. We hope our software can solve this problem.”
Sawbones and Numalogics are early in the development process and expect to release the software in 2022.
