Medical Modeling: McCoy's 'Sickbay' Seems Almost Quaint By Comparison

Posted by Dean Rotbart at 1/24/2008 10:16 AM
Categories: Meet The Players

Golden, CO - The scene is one borrowed directly from science fiction.

In a storefront setting, attended not by physicians but by well-trained, casually dressed craftspeople, "bionic" body parts are being sculpted and readied for study and implantation. 

On one computer screen, a patient is having a new hip joint engineered to order. On a second screen, a customized titanium plate is being perfectly paired to match the missing tip of an injured patient's skull. 

A periodontist, himself spared an early retirement following a serious accident thanks to model-based, precisely planned wrist surgery, checks in as three-dimensional translucent models of his patients' teeth and jaws are computer designed to make the implantation of new teeth implants a safer, faster, more accurate procedure.

 
More than four years after Medical Modeling helped surgeons successfully separate Egyptian twins who were cojoined at the head (top) Andy Christensen, president (bottom), reports the boys continue to make progress. 

Nearby, a blue laser beam dances over a pool of liquefied photopolymer resin darting from one computer-guided target to another. Slowly, but steadily, out of the glop will emerge the anatomically exact model of a patient's heart and vascular structure - allowing the patient's surgeon to accurately plan his approach to the surgery on the model - even while the patient lies - chest open - on the operating table.

This isn't science fiction. It is just another typical day at Medical Modeling, the rapidly expanding tactile imaging company that is using rapid additive fabrication and electron beam melting technologies to engineer customized body replacement parts and provide physicians and dentists highly accurate bone models produced from their patients' CT scan data.

L-VMA's director, Dean Rotbart, recently toured the Medical Modeling facilities situated along the eastern foothills of Colorado's Rocky Mountains. Rotbart met with Andy Christensen, president, and Nicolas Flannery, Manufacturing Operations Manager.

Rotbart reports that Medical Modeling, named a finalist in L-VMA's 2007 Rapid Innovator of the Year awards, has outgrown its original facility and is now split between two nearby office-laboratories.

"Andy Christensen clearly understands the vast opportunity that awaits his company and others involved in the 'rapid' healthcare industry," Rotbart says. "Andy has pulled together a team of talented and visionary individuals and outfitted them with state-of-the art technologies to produce true, daily medical miracles."

Medical customization allows surgeons to more accurately place replacement joints and bone parts while reducing the amount of cutting and sawing and thereby speeding the procedures and their recovery.

Medical Modeling first came to national prominence for its role in helping surgeons approach surgery with anatomically perfect models and some skull parts used to successfully separate Egyptian twin toddlers who were conjoined at the head.  Since that time Christensen reports the Medical Modeling team has been involved in providing tactile planning models to surgical teams working to separate more than 20 different sets of conjoined twins - a huge number by any standard.

Impressive as Medical Modeling's work is with cojoined twins, that is really a tiny part of the daily wonderments manufactured by Medical Modeling. 

"The smiling bus driver who greets you each morning may very well be the beneficiary of a mouthful of Medical Modeling-aided tooth implants, just as the Iraqi war veteran who is indistinguishable from all the other 27-year-olds on his basketball team can thank his Medical Modeling titanium skull implant for his outward normalcy," Rotbart says.  "All around us, people are living longer, more productive, higher quality lives thanks to the work that Medical Modeling quietly pursues each day," he adds.

To learn more about Medical Modeling and what it offers surgeons and health care providers, visit the company's website at www.medicalmodeling.com or contact Christensen at andy@medicalmodeling.com. 

 

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