PODCAST
Medical 3D Players: Pioneering Personalized Solutions for Hip Dysplasia (S2, Ep.02)
Discussing mass personalization in healthcare — because one size fits no one
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Uncover the latest medical advancements and challenges in 3D technology. Hosted by Pieter Slagmolen and Sebastian De Boodt from Materialise, this podcast examines key developments with experts in the healthcare industry.
In this episode, we sit down with Tim Van Cleynenbreugel, Co-Founder of Replasia, to explore groundbreaking innovations in hip dysplasia treatment. Discover how 3D printing and personalized implants are reshaping orthopaedic care, transitioning from canine trials to human applications. With a focus on improving patient outcomes through less invasive solutions, Tim shares his journey of turning revolutionary ideas into tangible products that could transform lives. Tune in for an insightful conversation on the future of personalized healthcare and medical device startups.
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Read the full transcript
Pieter Slagmolen 00:23
Today, we're thrilled to have Tim Van Cleynenbreugel, a trailblazer in the medical 3D printing industry and one of the founders of a new startup called Replasia, joining us. Welcome, Tim.
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 00:33
Thank you. Very nice introduction.
Sebastian De Boodt 00:35
Tim, you've been part of the medical 3D printing fabric in Flanders for quite some time already. There seems to be something special about the Belgian waters that fosters strong 3D entrepreneurs and companies. Do you have an explanation for that?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 00:49
I think it probably dates back to, as we call him, the godfather of 3D printing: Jean-Pierre Kruth, professor, or now emeritus professor at the mechanical engineering department, who really pioneered 3D printing as a research line at the university. If I remember correctly, he was both one of the founding fathers of Materialise and then later LayerWise, which was focused more on metal printing. And I think that is a big part of the explanation why 3D printing, at least in Leuven surroundings, is so advanced. I think that probably has a lot to do with it. Next to the fact, probably, that Belgium and Flanders, in general, as it comes to technological development, are very advanced. I guess those are some of the explanations that I can see.
Sebastian De Boodt 01:37
And you also had the pleasure of having him as a professor during your studies?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 01:41
I did, yes. He was actually one of the co-promoters of my Master's thesis. Then, for my PhD, he was not really involved, but then, working both at Materialise and later at LayerWise, I still was in contact with him.
Sebastian De Boodt 01:56
So you did a PhD in 3D printing as well?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 02:00
It was somewhat related to 3D printing. So, we were looking at bone tissue engineering as a large multidisciplinary research project, GBOU, as it was called back then, which was really a pioneering project in tissue engineering. We looked at different replacement materials for bone tissue for the healing of large, critical bone defects. And so we looked at porous ceramics, porous metals. Back then, 3D printing, especially metal 3D printing, was not that advanced yet, unfortunately. So, we looked at more conventional production techniques. But nowadays, obviously, 3D printing would be a major part of our research.
Pieter Slagmolen 02:41
We share some history! I also had lessons from Professor Kruth, and I also did a PhD at the University of Leuven. The third thing that we share is that you also roamed the halls here at Materialise at one point in time. That was a while ago. How have you seen the company evolve since you left us?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 02:57
Well, it has been expanding massively. I was just saying on my way here that when I was here, there were only buildings A and B, and I was part of Materialise Dental, which was, back then, a daughter company of Materialise focused on dental applications, then later acquired by DENTSPLY. But I was situated here in the building as well, in Building B, and I've always had very close ties with Materialise. We had very close interaction with the people of Materialise, even though we were a separate company, mostly because we also shared the 3D printing capabilities, we shared the software development, and so on. Materialise always had a big place in my heart, let's say. And well, I've been following Materialise ever since I left, and then, obviously, it's been expanding ever since. Now, with building C and D and many, many acquisitions over the years. So I've seen great things at Materialise.
Pieter Slagmolen 03:54
You mentioned that at that point in time, you were in the dental industry, which was indeed still part of Materialise at the time. The theme of this podcast is personalization and mass personalization. In the dental industry, personalization has become somewhat the standard of care nowadays. Can you share some history of the earlier days of that and how you experienced it at the time?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 04:14
When I was at Materialise Dental, we had a software product called Simplant, which was developed for treatment planning of dental implants, and then we had a hardware product, which was a 3D-printed product, of course, which was a surgical guide. So, that was a patient-specific guide made to place those implants in the plant location. So that, I think, was one of the more early applications of 3D printing in medical applications. I think the dental field is probably a very suitable area for that application because it's in the mouth, so it's more easily accessible. If something goes wrong, it's very easy to treat. It's not a sterile environment, and so on. So I think that makes it a very grateful application, and also because, probably, mass personalization has been present in the dental field for quite a while because every denture that they make is always made to fit. So, that was on the surgi-guide side, that was plastic 3D printing using SLA. And then at LayerWise, we also made the metal frames for the Supra structures. So that was also custom-designed specifically for one patient based on the planning of how to restore the patient's teeth, and that was then printed in either cobalt-chromium or titanium.
Sebastian De Boodt 05:35
How did that adoption go in the markets? Was there some resistance in the start, or was the market embracing it from day one, 3D-printed personalized devices?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 05:45
I always experienced the dental field as being quite innovative and quite easy to accept new innovations. I'm now in the orthopaedic field, and there, it’s slightly different. I think there, the hurdle is a bit higher, to convince surgeons to try new treatments and to have new innovations being adopted. But in the dental field, probably because dental technicians were already used to making custom devices, I think that's part of the explanation why the adoption was, in my experience at least, quite easy.
Sebastian De Boodt 06:23
Now you have moved on to different medical devices and have experience with that as well over the past years. Are there any lessons from the dental industry's success that could be applied to today's innovative medical applications?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 06:36
Probably the ease of adoption. If you look at my track record, you can tell that I'm a strong believer of personalized medicine and that not one size fits all. And as I said, in the dental field, it has been, quite early on, been easily accepted. I think maybe the other fields can learn some lessons from how to embrace new technologies and how to accept new technologies like 3D printing, digital planning, and so on.
Pieter Slagmolen 07:15
Let's talk about Replasia, because that is in a different industry. You're trying to, I assume, apply some of the learnings that you bring from your history there. Can you tell us a bit about what Replasia is and what's the origin story, and how did you get involved with the company?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 07:30
Sure. So, we are a medical device startup. We're a very small company. We're only three people at the moment, and our company is based on an idea from the University Hospital in Utrecht. They had an innovative idea to provide better treatment for patients, for young adults with hip dysplasia. So hip dysplasia is characterized by an underdeveloped acetabulum, so the coverage of the femoral head by the acetabulum is too small, and this gives complaints like joint laxity but also pain, wear of the cartilage, and in many cases, this is only detected in young adults once they reach the age of, let's say, 16-18. And at that time, the traditional treatment that they use for babies, if they detect hip dysplasia, where they have to wear this harness, is no longer accessible to these patients because the skeleton is fully grown, the growth plates have closed, so the triradiate cartilage in the acetabulum has closed.
And the only treatment — well, they can try treatments using drugs or physiotherapy, but in many cases, only surgical treatment is an option. And the current gold standard is what they call a PAO, periacetabular osteotomy, so that's a large, invasive surgery where they release the acetabulum from the rest of the pelvis, then reorient it in a more optimal position over the femoral head and then fix it with long screws and then let that heal. And that has quite a good outcome if done correctly. There's a very steep learning curve because of the complexity and the risks involved in the surgery, but when done right, it usually has quite a good outcome. But we believe that there are many patients that have what they call borderline dysplasia, so not a very excessive dysplasia with a large under coverage, but a smaller defect in the acetabulum, where other treatments might be more suited, or at least less invasive treatments could be an alternative to the PAO.
So the idea was then to see if we could come up with a personalized implant, sort of a ledge, sort of an abutment, if you will, a buttress that you place against the iliac wing, and that then extends that femoral head coverage, and thereby alleviating some of the symptoms. So that was the idea. And that's actually based on a surgical treatment that was done many years ago. It still exists today but has been abandoned for adults, and that's the shelf acetabuloplasty. What they do is they take a bone graft and place it above the acetabulum, outside the joint capsule. They make a slot in the iliac wing, place the graft there, and that then acts as a natural extension of the acetabulum. But that has mixed outcomes. If you place the graft too high, then it resorbs, and it doesn't do anything. If you place it too low, you get impingement. So you might solve one problem, but you create another problem. So the idea was, why not try to use a patient-specific implant based on CT images, on digital images, design an implant that extends that coverage that then is manufactured using metal 3D printing, which is obviously the most suitable production technique, and then implant that device above the acetabulum, or, sorry, next to the acetabulum outside of the joint capsule to help in stabilizing the joint. And then they tried that on dogs. They did a large dog study with over 60 dogs with very good results, and that led them then to the decision to see if that could be extended to human patients. So they reached out to my colleague and co-founder, Peter Mercelis, who was also the founder, or one of the co-founders, of LayerWise, one of the 3D printing companies that was also originated from the research of Professor Kruth. So they reached out to him. He then looked at the application, made a business plan, and so on, and that all looked very solid. Then we raised some starting capital, we got a VLAIO grant, and here we are today.
Sebastian De Boodt 11:41
What a story. And how is that for you? Because you moved from Materialise, and then later, LayerWise, into 3D Systems. Now you're back in more of a startup, right? You're really doing some very innovative stuff within a small company. How is that for you?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 11:57
It's an adventure. It's quite a rollercoaster. Until maybe five years ago, I was not really inclined to join a startup. I have been working in smaller companies. Materialise Dental, when I joined, there were only, I think, 30 or 40 people. When I joined LayerWise, it was about the same size, but both companies got acquired by a large American multinational. So, Materialise Dental was acquired by DENTSPLY, as I just mentioned, and then LayerWise, it was acquired by 3D systems. So, I've seen the change from being in a small company to being part of a large American multinational. And I always felt more at home in smaller companies. But then, after LayerWise, I joined Comate, engineering and design, so they do product development as a service for other companies; I was leading the medical field, the medical business there, and so we worked a lot with medical device startup companies because they don't have the resources in house to develop products themselves. So they need companies like Comate to help them develop a product. And that's where I got in contact with a lot of medical device startups, and that's where I started to feel the itch, let's say, to start a business myself. When Peter reached out to me to see if I was interested in joining Replasia, it was quite a no-brainer for me. So that's how I got to join Replasia. And it's been great fun. I noticed that I really like to be in the driver's seat and really lead a company and make all the decisions from A to Z, also develop a product from just an idea and try to bring it all the way to the product in the market. So, that's also been a huge learning experience for me.
Sebastian De Boodt 13:53
That road towards getting into the market; where are you today, and what are some of the milestones that you still need to reach in order to get to your first patient?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 14:04
We actually diversified a little bit in the sense that we were initially focusing purely on a hardware product, which is the implant, and some accessories that are needed to place the implant and do the surgery. But in order to design that implant, we had some software tools that we developed in-house to do some analysis based on medical image data, and when we showed it to surgeons, there was a lot of enthusiasm and interest in the data that we generated with our software, which are very specific measurements for our application, but they are useful to get a more complete picture of the patient situation. Because as you might know, even still today, many diagnoses of hip conditions are made just purely on a 2D anterior, posterior radiograph. So, it's just a 2D measurement on a projection, so it doesn't give a complete 3D image. What we tried to do was really do full 3D measurements. And we saw a lot of interest for surgeons, hip surgeons, to get access to that data as well. So we decided then to also start developing that as a separate product that we want to bring to the market as well.
So we have been diversifying a little bit, also not to put all our eggs into one basket, so to speak, because the device that we're developing for treatment of hip dysplasia is completely new. As far as we know, at least. There's no predicate device other than that surgery that I mentioned, which is more a surgical technique, it's not a medical device. So even though we've seen very good results in dogs, we don't know yet if it's going to be as successful in humans. So, where are we on the road to market? We've finalized the design development phase, and we're now working towards a first in human application, which is also extremely exciting; that's going to be a major milestone for us because that's going to hopefully confirm that our device does what we hope and think it will do in human patients.
Pieter Slagmolen 16:19
If you talk to potential end customers for the future product, how do they perceive the importance of personalization in this specific use case? Especially in hip surgery, there are a lot of standard implants to use nowadays, so why, in this specific indication, is personalization so important?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 16:36
We do see a bit of a threshold there with surgeons, especially surgeons that are very experienced in the current gold standard, let's say the PAO. They have some questions about the suitability. So, we will first have to demonstrate that it indeed works. So yeah, we'll see how things go. I think we first have to gather the clinical evidence and really demonstrate that it works.
I think personalization in orthopaedics has become more and more common; I think Materialise as a company is certainly one of the pioneers in that field as well. In fact, the two PhD students that were the founders of Mobelife back in the day were also colleagues of mine when I was doing my PhD. So I also know that research quite well, and from what I can tell, I think they were really pioneers in making a truly custom-made implant as a joint replacement. In our case, we are certainly not doing any joint replacement, so we're not trying to make an alternative for the traditional hip cup and stem implants because they are so successful and so well advanced that there's not much improvement that can be achieved there for the normal cases that need prostheses. Obviously, in the case of the aMace, it's a different story. Where you have larger visions or oncology cases, that's a different story. So what we develop is something that's sitting outside of the joint and just provides additional stability to the joint. And we do expect that the acceptance there will be easier because you're not replacing part of the joint. You're not permanently changing the joint. The implant can be taken out if needed; if you want to convert at some point to a total hip prosthesis, that can be done as well. So yeah, we do expect some more acceptance of our concept, but to be seen.
Sebastian De Boodt 18:45
Is this a very niche indication, or is there going to be a lot of patients who could benefit from it?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 18:53
Well, hip dysplasia is more common than you would think. There are studies that claim that in one out of four total hip replacements, patients do have some form of hip dysplasia. And in fact, one of the consequences of hip dysplasia can be an early wear of the cartilage, and if they have advanced osteoarthritis, then in many cases, the last resort is then conversion to a hip prosthesis, which obviously, for a patient of, let's say, 20-30, years old, is far from ideal, because they will need at least two to three revisions in their lifetime. So, it is more common than you would think.
Obviously, for our specific application. We do not aim to replace the PAO surgery. We think that can coexist side by side with our solution, because we aim more at less severe cases of hip dysplasia. But again, we need more clinical data to see which kinds of cases and which patients are the most suited. At this moment, we believe that is a more mild case, the borderline dysplasia, that those are more suited for our application. However, it also depends on where the acetabular defect is. If it's more on the anterior side, where often that defect occurs in patients, then you have the psoas muscle that covers the bone there. So, you cannot put an implant there. So, for an anterior defect, the PAO will probably always be a more suitable solution. But again, we need more clinical data, but it is indeed a more niche application. It's not a huge market, but for a startup company, that is perfect, I would say.
Pieter Slagmolen 20:47
One thing I found interesting about this application as well: you mentioned that there is quite some evidence on dogs, but in a way, it's not the traditional pre-clinical animal trials that you would do to gather evidence. In this case, you're really also helping the dogs, right? Can you maybe talk a bit more about that?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 21:04
They did a really small clinical trial on dogs, with only three dogs, and that was successful. Then, they did a large study with 35 dogs, and these were real patients. So, these were not animal experiments. These were real patients, dogs that really suffered from hip dysplasia, were limping, and were not as active as they should have been. And what they saw is, if they treated those dogs, even the day after surgery, they were happily jumping around like nothing happened. It was really spectacular to see. And the reason that a dog study was done is that, from an anatomical point of view, there are quite some similarities in the hip joint between dogs and humans. Obviously, it's a different biomechanical loading that happens, but there are quite some similarities. However, dysplasia is very common in dogs as well. That also made it a suitable animal model, let's say, to test the application.
Pieter Slagmolen 22:07
So, will Replasia also treat dogs in the future?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 22:12
Actually, no, no. We are purely focused on the human application. It is also being commercialized for dogs. But that is a different company. It's a German company called Rita Leibinger that is actually commercializing the dog version of our concept.
Sebastian De Boodt 22:28
I can imagine biomechanics is very different. The dog obviously stands on his four feet.
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 22:35
Yes, it walks on four feet. The femur is at a 90-degree angle compared to the pelvis, as opposed to humans, where its pelvis and the femur are vertically aligned when walking. So, yes, there are certainly some differences.
Sebastian De Boodt 22:53
Tim, when you're talking, it's very clear the wealth of knowledge that you have on the clinical application, which I think is very nice to hear. Now, you talked a couple of times about how the first in-human will have to demonstrate that it works, the product. How will you demonstrate that? What measurements or what things are you looking at?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 23:14
It's a typical clinical trial, clinical investigation that we will do, but it's a first-in-human, so it's not a pivotal trial to get CE marking. This is really to demonstrate that at least it does what we think it will do. There, we look at many different parameters, like gait analysis, pain score, and so on. In the end, what it all boils down to is that the patient needs to be relieved of his symptoms as much as possible. So the limping, the pain in the groin, maybe some joint luxation, joint laxity, and so on, to see if that indeed is reduced with our solution.
Pieter Slagmolen 23:58
Maybe it's an early stage to ask this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway because the company is still early; you're still quite small. We see that a lot of companies initially focusing on personalized devices do struggle with some operational aspects and user experience aspects of that because the bar has been set by larger companies, I guess, such as ourselves, as well, on how people would like to interact and achieve and obtain and have software and everything around that ecosystem, around such a personalized environment. How do you look at that from your perspective, and how do you tackle those differences in expectations from the end user versus the capabilities of a startup company?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 24:37
It's a very important aspect because, in the end, the surgeon's user experience has to be as smooth and painless as possible. So they need to be able to interact very easily. They should be able to upload their images easily, approve plans, and so on. Get clear instructions. Get clear help when they have a question. For us, that's still not that urgent at the moment because we're still in the early phase, and we have very close contact with only a few surgeons, but at some point, that will certainly become, if everything goes as planned, that will certainly become a very important aspect.
We are already looking at using an existing online platform for data exchange, something that's CE marked as a medical device, so that cybersecurity, patient privacy, and all of that is all secured, but also to make it easy for surgeons to send us image data, to look at the planning, to approve it, to have that communication as painless as possible. So, certainly a very important aspect. And then there's obviously also the technical support if they have any questions, if they're stuck with certain decisions that they need to make, or even during the surgery if something is not clear. But I guess we'll take that hurdle when we get there.
Sebastian De Boodt 26:03
Feels like a luxury problem to have.
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 26:08
In a way, it is, yeah, but it is certainly something to keep in mind.
Pieter Slagmolen 26:12
One of the founding fathers of the research that you described also led to the establishment of Replasia in Utrecht. They also won the Mimics Innovation Award at Materialise for that research. Now that was with a bioresorbable implant if I'm not mistaken. Where are you? What material is the implant going to be from? And why do you make that choice?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 26:32
We are using a titanium alloy, Ti64 Grade 23, sort of a very standard titanium alloy that's used in many orthopaedic implants. I think using bioresorbable materials, also bioresorbable metals like zinc or magnesium, is certainly very interesting. I haven't been paying that close attention to those applications in the last few years, but my feeling is that it is still in a very early stage because I think it — especially for metal implants — it will be very challenging to tailor the degradation of the metal to the need for biomechanical stability and the body taking over that mechanical stability by newly formed bone, for example.
So, I think we are already making an implant, which is quite a challenging application because it's an artificial device that stays in the body for many, many years. Now, looking at resorbable materials would make that a lot more challenging, even. So, I think that's not on the roadmap for us. And in our application, I don't really see the benefit of using resorbable material. I think for some bone plates or screws, I can see why a resorbable metal implant can be very useful so that it dissipates over time and gets replaced by the patient's own bone tissue. In our case, I don't really see an application for that. What could be interesting is to look at maybe coatings. One of the other things that they're also looking at for patient-specific implants, such as orthopaedic implants, is to see if they can apply antimicrobial coatings that help prevent infections. Because, as you know, infection in orthopaedics is a major problem, and that could maybe be interesting for us as well, but we don't feel that there's a real need, looking at our specific application.
Pieter Slagmolen 28:44
Because it's a load-bearing implant, it's also extremely complex to think about these things.
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 28:50
Yeah, exactly. The last thing that you want to have to happen is that it resorbs too fast and that it breaks off, then you need revision surgery, and that's something that you absolutely want to avoid.
Sebastian De Boodt 29:02
You mentioned that there is no predicate device for what you're doing, which also comes with some additional challenges, and with the complexity of the European innovation ecosystem due to MDR, many companies look to the US to explore is that where we should go first with some of our innovations? How are you navigating this as a European-bred company today?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 29:27
Well, I can confirm that the MDR has not made it easier to bring medical devices to the market. Obviously, there were good reasons why the MDD needed to be revised and updated, and new regulation was needed, but indeed, it is quite challenging, and one of the struggles we have as a young medical device startup company working with a medium-high risk device is really to navigate the regulatory landscape in Europe.
What I noticed is that if you have a certain regulatory question, it's quite hard to get really definite answers because the people or the organizations that, in the end, decide whether or not you can go to market are notified bodies. But they are not allowed to give you any advice, which obviously makes sense, but that makes it hard to get real definitive answers to some of the questions that we had. So obviously, we still have to, at some point, have a review of our technical file by a notified body, and so on, and then we will know for certain if we made the right decisions. But that has been a bit of a challenge. I think, in that sense, the US is probably a bit easier because there you have one large organization, the FDA, that decides yes or no. So you have one organization they can go to, and they indeed can help you in navigating the landscape. So, for us, the US market is certainly on the radar. But for now, we are focusing on Europe, just for proximity, and because we are working with the UMC Utrecht, clinical trials or clinical investigations will also happen in the Netherlands. So, for that reason, we're now looking at Europe.
Sebastian De Boodt 31:18
Good to have some pioneers like you who are trying to explore this new territory. Many companies will learn from that as well, as will the notified bodies.
Pieter Slagmolen 31:28
Recently, I think you were also at one of our events, where we try to somehow bring people together to exchange some ideas, also on the complexity, because there are a lot of similar challenges I think that companies have in tackling these regulatory environments. Does that kind of event bring new insights to you and how you act as a company or interact with other companies? Does that change how you operate and navigate these questions?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 31:56
I thought that the Leading Minds event that you're talking about was very well organized and very useful. I think it was a really great group of people that you guys put together that were all working in a very similar field, in our case, then in custom-made and patient-specific orthopaedics. And I did have some really great interactions, some great contacts to follow up on and to bounce some ideas off of and get maybe some advice.
The other thing that I did appreciate was that Materialise was also willing to share their knowledge. There was one session on the regulatory aspect of personalized medicine, which was also much appreciated because, obviously, Materialise is one of the pioneers in this field. They have a wealth of knowledge and experience in this field. The guys have many products on the market already, CE-marked, 510K cleared, and so on. So having access to some of that knowledge is obviously very valuable for us as a startup company because otherwise, we would have to figure it out ourselves, and getting some of that guidance of how you guys have done it was certainly very interesting as well.
Sebastian De Boodt 33:11
Very happy to hear, Tim, that it was useful. Hopefully, when this episode goes live, there will be some new people maybe reaching out to you as well to connect. And maybe we can ask our colleague Benjamin (Tuts) as well, at some point, as a guest on this podcast. Looking at the future, I think today you're on this interesting track, with a lot of challenges still ahead of you; if you look five years into the future, for example, where would you like to be?
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 33:40
Bringing a medical device to the market is quite challenging and takes a lot of time, especially with implantable devices. In five years' time, I hope that we can really make a difference for patients, that we can provide a new, less invasive treatment option for patients suffering from hip dysplasia that is less invasive, faster recovery and so on. Hopefully, by then, we will be able to help many patients by having a product on the market. I think that would be my wish within five years.
Sebastian De Boodt 34:15
All right, we're rooting for you. I think you're on a good track, and we're looking forward to that future as well. Well, this has been a very enlightening conversation, Tim, and thanks so much for sharing your expertise. One of the things that I take away is the importance of understanding really the clinical need and really focusing on that and finding something specific where personalization can really make a difference, ideally, already starting from some evidence — you had your dog trials to help you there. I think that's something that I definitely take away. There's a lot of innovative and cool technology that we have, but you really need to find a good, meaningful application to justify spending a couple of years of your life making your product successful.
Tim Van Cleynenbreugel 35:02
Absolutely, and it is a bit of kicking in an open door, of course, but in the end, what it all comes down to is helping the patient. We want to provide better treatments for patients, improve their lives, help young people become more active again, and help them take up their active lives before they started suffering from hip dysplasia. And hopefully we can contribute to that as well with our ideas and our solutions.
Pieter Slagmolen 35:30
That's probably one of my takeaways, is that's the direction you're taking, but in a way, in that journey, you also bring some realism into starting up a company and making sure that you get revenue by looking at, OK, how can we get some of the analysis things that we're already doing, the development, how can we bring that to market as a software product. While resorbables may be a dream for many people, taking a more down-to-earth or more realistic approach means that the time-to-market is not 20 years, but hopefully a bit shorter. I think that realism is allowing us to help patients sooner. I think that's very interesting and exciting.
Sebastian De Boodt 36:05
We wish you all the best in the next steps of your adventure.
Featuring

Tim Van Cleynenbreugel
Co-Founder, Replasia
About your hosts

Pieter Slagmolen
Innovation Manager

Sebastian De Boodt
Market Director, Materialise
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