Startup Canary Medical (Vancouver, British Columbia), which created the Canary Health Implantable Reporting Processor (CHIRP) that is going inside the Persona-IQ, has cemented a long-term relationship with Zimmer Biomet to provide proprietary use of the sensor technology for all the areas where ZB is active, ZB CEO Bryan Hanson disclosed during the company’s Q1 earnings call.
“It’s going to be for hip, it’s going to be for shoulder, there’s going to be a whole pipeline of technologies that will launch,” Hanson said in the transcript, transcribed by Seeking Alpha.
“We are excited to be able to start to work on a very robust pipeline of technology,” Hanson later added. “We’ve got to look at miniaturization. We’ve got to look at battery consumption. We’ve got to look at different form factors that would allow us to use the sensor in other implants.”
For now, there’s the Persona-IQ, which is in the final stages of a De Novo 510(k) clearance process at the FDA. Hanson said ZB is getting positive feedback from ortho surgeons. “I can tell you that they’re interested in being able to capture data from inside the body. And this is unique, they’ve not been able to do this before.”
Also later this year, Zimmer Biomet plans to launch a version of its Rosa surgical robot for hip surgery. Digital and robotic surgery technologies are a top priority at ZB, which has packaged the tech together into the new ZBEdge connected intelligence suite.
