Hubbard Performs First Smart Knee Implant in Central Arkansas

Orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Michael Hubbard, was set on implanting a smart knee for quite some time. He waited, however, until he felt certain the data showed the technology to be successful. Once it had been proven, and having no shortage of candidates for the surgery, he selected one patient as the first, ensuring the patient had the capacity to engage with the new technology.

Hubbard used Persona IQ^®, the world’s first and only smart knee implant granted De Novo status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for total knee replacement surgery. Persona IQ combines their  knee implant, Persona^® The Personalized Knee^®, with implantable sensor technology that measures range of motion, step count, walking speed and other gait metrics.

"If you're going to have a problem early, it's easier to get on top of that rather than waiting three months or six months or a year even," he said.

Now, if there is a problem, Hubbard can diagnose it quickly using the data collected from the knee.

Persona IQ features implantable sensor technology, similar to a pacemaker.  Once placed in the knee, Persona IQ^® records and wirelessly transmits a wide range of gait data to a patient’s personal base station at home. The data are then securely delivered to a HIPAA compliant cloud-based platform and can be accessed by the patient and the surgeon.