Celebrating 10 years of AO innovation funding

Empowering innovators from concept to market

Since 2014, the AO has been further expanding its capacity as a powerhouse of innovation, using own resources to drive innovators’ ideas forward with expertise and funding. AO innovation funding fosters innovation in products and strategic initiatives from bench to bedside to improve patient care and surgeon education. 
Over the past ten years, it has supported over 40 projects, of which six are now in clinical use. Another six have been integrated into the AO’s educational offerings.
Some of the highlights of AO-innovation-funded products:

• The AO Fracture Monitor is being applied in a pre-market safety study. The implantable telemetric sensor system, controlled through a smartphone app, was first implanted in October 2023 and promises to provide highly accurate and timely insights into progression of fracture healing to clinicians by delivering continuous data on load bearing of the fracture site, thus getting patients back on their feet sooner, detecting complications early, and reducing associated costs.
• With almost 100 patients treated in an ongoing clinical study, another AO innovation, the Biphasic Plate, is even further ahead in its process to be ready for market and has already been AO approved as well as CE marked.
• Other CE marked AO innovation funded products include the Small bone external fixator and the Distal Radius Intramedullary (DRIM) Nail. 
• The Momentum Spine App has meanwhile been FDA cleared and is commercially available in North America. With safety and dose-finding pre-market studies concluded, Liposphere’s CCoat is also moving towards commercial availability—randomized controlled trials in Europe are scheduled for 2025.
  
  

The AO’s educational offerings have also benefitted from the innovation fund, with six projects now integrated:  

• Digitally Enhanced Hands-on Surgical Training (DEHST) has been deployed into AO Trauma educational programs, such as AO Milestones in North America and AO Trauma Basic Principles Courses in Europe, as well as AO VET’s Feline Orthopedics and Traumatology at the upcoming Davos Courses.
• OSapp, the AO’s interactive, virtual osteosynthesis software tool and learning platform, is well integrated into various educational offerings such as AO Surgery Reference, AO Milestones, AO Trauma resident courses, Skills lab, and myAO.
• AO Extended Reality (AO XR) pioneers integration of mixed-reality technologies into surgical education to take the AO’s popular small group case discussions to the next level of engagement and knowledge retention at on-site courses.
• AO Surgery Reference-Pediatric Trauma (AOSR-PT), a dynamic educational resource, was made possible by a 2014 grant from the Strategy Fund.
• The AO’s suite of open-access disaster response and conflict zone resource materials for medical professionals are helping surgeons worldwide.