TENET Medical Engineering
Executive Summary
Patient positioning systems in orthopedics
Contact:Ken Moore, Director
Address:2004 10th Ave. SW, Calgary, Alberta T3C OJ8, Canada
Phone:(403) 571-0750
Founded:January 1994
As the sophistication of surgical procedures in orthopedics continues, so too does the need for more specialized patient positioning products—accessories to OR beds that position and support limbs to enable orthopedic surgeons easier access to treat fractures and joint injuries. Tenet Medical Engineering Inc., founded by a team of researchers from the University of Calgary's McCaig Centre for Joint Injury and Arthritis Research, aims to meet the needs of this growing market.
Originally founded around a device enabling physicians to measure stiffness in cartilage (called an arthroscopic indentor) for which it received a Phase II grant from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, Tenet has since developed a broad suite of patient positioning systems developed with the cooperation of practitioners in Western Canada that have eclipsed this original device.
Among Tenet's systems that have received FDA approval and are now being marketed in the US and Canada are the Tenet Fracture Support System, a knee-positioning device for inter-medullary nailing procedures—an operation in which a long nail is passed through the bone and screwed at either end far from the fracture. The procedure has been growing in popularity since its introduction about seven years ago, and is being used for a growing number of applications. The system provides a stable, radiolucent support which easily provides the positioning needed for the procedure. Previously, a practitioner would use foam wedges to position the knee properly for the procedure.
Filling out Tenet's patient positioning product offering are a line of surgical hand tables for hand, wrist, and forearm surgery, and a line of surgical stirrups for limb positioning. The Fracture Support Systemand surgical hand tables are radiolucent, allowing limbs to be X-rayed while in the support systems. The system is distributed in the US and Canada by Smith & Nephew PLC .
On the horizon, Tenet is collaborating with the Canadian Space Agency and the Alberta Research Council on an isokinetic diagnostic system for measuring strength and range of motion in fractured limbs; preliminary data from the research is expected in 1998.
Tenet's founders, Dennis Chimich, Roger McPherson, (engineers by training) and director Ken Moore (a biomechanist), were all University of Calgary researchers prior to the company's founding. Tenet was originally funded with capital provided by the founders and a grant from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research. The company is now funded by its own revenues, but may seek venture funding or launch an IPO in the near future. —KR