This is a big month for Avenir Medical.
After four years of research, prototypes and challenges, the Waterloo-based startup focused on improving results for joint replacement patients will see its hardware used in the first live surgery of its kind.
If the procedure is successful, Avenir will change the way joint replacement surgery is done in Canada.
“We’ve been looking forward to this since the day we started,” said Armen Bakirtzian, the company’s co-founder and CEO. “To get a medical product out on the shelves is a big deal. We’re really excited.”
Avenir makes sensor technology to help doctors track pelvic motion and their surgical tools during the procedure. Connected to a computer, the sensors use an algorithm to determine the best positioning for the joint in real time during surgery.
Bakirtzian said one out of 40 replacement hip joints is not properly aligned during the first surgery and requires a follow-up procedure to balance it. The human and financial cost of having to redo a joint surgery due to doctor error is high.
“Currently surgeons do this type of surgery by eye,” he said. “Because of that they make mistakes. We help them put the implants in properly to help them improve their patient outcomes.”
Bakirtzian comes by his desire to help heal people naturally: His father is an orthopedic surgeon. He didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps directly, but he studied mechatronics engineering, with a biotech focus, at the University of Waterloo.
His light bulb moment came during his fourth year, when he accompanied his father during a hip replacement surgery. His dad explained that the process was done basically by eye and wasn’t an exact science, so sometimes, the new hip wasn’t a perfect fit.
That was it; Bakirtzian knew he had found his fourth-year design project challenge. He and his team didn’t expect to become so engaged in the project, however, and Bakirtzian wasn’t looking to be an entrepreneur.
After graduation, the team pursued other opportunities, including jobs and graduate school, but kept working on their research in their spare time.
While in graduate school at the University of Toronto in 2010, Bakirtzian won the Ontario Centres of Excellence Ontario's Next Top Young Entrepreneur Start-Up Pitch Competition, which “gave us validation and the encouragement to focus on [Avenir] full time,” he said.
This month’s scheduled live surgery follows Avenir’s announcement of a $3.3-million Series A investment round last month.
This is all great news for three guys who came out of the University of Waterloo knowing about a problem and just wanting to find a solution.
“[Being an entrepreneur] is not as scary as you think,” says Bakirtzian. “You’re always scared of something you don’t understand. It’s scary to take that first plunge. When you’re in it it’s great, and nothing to be afraid of.”
