Artificially Intelligent Design for Orthopedic Devices

Increasingly, orthopedic device manufacturers are gearing their prototyping and design efforts toward a single goal—time to market. Time to market is a critical factor for getting new products into the marketplace and beating out the competition. As a result, design and development are not just about how new or advanced a function or technology is—they are also about using powerful software tools such as generative design, finite element analysis (FEA), virtual prototyping, and digital twins to shorten production schedules, error-proof designs, and speed up time to market. The abundance of creative design opportunities these software tools provide is exciting but also challenging for orthopedic device design and prototyping. An increasing number of manufacturers are embracing digital tools such as 3D anatomical printing, image-based patient-specific planning, and virtual reality/augmented reality; however, they are also aware these technologies must operate within established processes that still have limitations, such as scalability.

“For example, one of the biggest bottlenecks for any patient-specific workflow remains segmentation and landmarking,