“Growing up with an orthopaedic surgeon for a father, there was always a motivation to go into medicine,” Armen Bakirtzian recalls while discussing his decision to sidestep medical school to pursue his passion for technology and engineering. Bakirtzian may have taken a different route into the medical world from his dad, but his mark on orthopaedics has been nothing less than groundbreaking.
Bakirtzian is the CEO and co-founder of Intellijoint Surgical Inc., Canada’s fastest growing tech company in 2020 according to Deloitte Canada. Their flagship product, Intellijoint HIP, is a computer navigation system that assists orthopaedic surgeons with implant size selection and positioning during total hip replacement (THR) surgery. The miniature optical camera provides accurate, real-time measurements while compensating for intraoperative patient movement, which is routine during THR. Today, Intellijoint HIP has been used by surgeons worldwide, including Bakirtzian’s father, in more than 15,000 hip replacement surgeries.
From startup to the operating room
The idea for Intellijoint HIP came from Bakirtzian’s final year capstone design assignment at the University of Waterloo. He needed an innovative engineering project and was inspired by a frank discussion he had with his dad.
“He was forthcoming that surgeons have to rely on their training and their judgement to make decisions during surgery, and that in some cases, patients will have to undergo more costly and involved revision surgery,” Bakirtzian says. “That was the motivation for us to create a technology to help deliver better outcomes for patients.”
After graduation, Bakirtzian and his classmates, now co-founders, Andre Hladio and Richard Fanson, worked closely with surgeons to design a prototype that would inform decision making in the operating room in real-time. But developing a solution to a real-world problem may have been the easiest part of the journey.
“A startup is about getting your problem identified, understanding your customer and developing your prototype,” Bakirtzian says. “Our goal from the beginning was to graduate from a startup and become a real medical technology company.”