ArtioSense was born out of a desire to solve force sensing challenges in precision orthopaedic surgery. Improper force balancing during joint replacement surgery is a major cause of implant wear and premature failure, which necessitates complex and difficult revision surgery. This is of course distressing for patients, severely impacting their quality of life. It also places further burdens on already overstretched public health systems. 

Solving this challenge requires sensors that can measure the large forces passing through weight-bearing joints, while still being thin and conformable to facilitate their use in curved geometries such as the hip. Leveraging state-of-the-art additive manufacturing techniques, the ArtioSense team has invented a microfluidic force sensor (patent pending) that addresses this unmet clinical need in a highly robust manner. 

The microfluidic sensor is thin, conformable, robust and capable of measuring a wide range of forces in different settings. A paper describing the underlying technology has been published in Cell Reports Physical Science, with follow up publications in preparation describing various different applications of the technology. We are in the process of conducting pre-clinical trials of the technology, following which we will plan first-in-human trials of the sensors as the next step of our translational pathway.