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Medical Protection Technologies |
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May 20, 2013 Issue |
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The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
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Medical Protection Technologies markets the Fall-Safe® Hip Protector made from the patented shock-absorbing material D30®, a transformative product for at risk older adults in nursing homes and senior living facilities |
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Medical Protection
Technologies is the exclusive North American provider of medical device
products made from the unique, patented shock-absorbing material D3O®. The
company’s initial product, the Fall-Safe® Hip Protector, is
designed to reduce hip fractures among the medically vulnerable. It provides
the ideal combination of high impact protection and wearing comfort—even
when sleeping—thereby enhancing compliance with hip protection protocols. As
a result, it offers significant fracture-prevention and cost-saving
potential for both at-home and institutional use.
Before Communicore, Dr. Robins spent 10 years in the international pharmaceutical industry, directing domestic and international clinical research and medical communications programs and divisions for both pharmaceuticals and medical devices, with Eli Lilly, Syntex and Allergan, the last as vice president of clinical research and medical communications. Dr. Robins has developed and directed dozens of independent third-party strategic medical marketing programs. He received his medical training at Guys Hospital/London University and subsequently specialized in internal and family medicine. |
Hip Protectors
Medical Protection Technologies
P.O. Box 2389 360-370-5757
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Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – May 20, 2013
CEOCFO: Dr. Robins, would you tell us the concept behind the company? Dr. Robins: The concept behind Medical Protection Technologies is to introduce new impact protection technology that provides improved protection against hip fractures in the large and growing population of people who are at risk for this devastating injury following a fall, primarily older people and especially women with osteoporosis.
CEOCFO: What have you come up with and how does it work? Dr. Robins: Hip protectors have been around for a couple of decades. Initially, they were hard pads sewn into a special undergarment with two pockets on the sides over the most prominent part of the hip. Because they were bulky and uncomfortable to wear, however, people were reluctant to use them. Over a number of years, manufacturers tried switching from hard-shell hip protectors to softer ones that were more comfortable—but at the price of lesser efficacy. In trying to mitigate this trade-off, partly hard and partly soft combinations were introduced but with variable acceptance, due in part to esthetic considerations. At the end of the day, if the hip protectors are uncomfortable or esthetically unacceptable, people will not wear them, and if they are not wearing them, they will not be protected. That is the essence of the problem. In recent years, a far better impact protection material has been developed called D3O®, which was first used by the 2006 U.S. and Canadian Olympic ski teams. Pads made of D3O were sewn into their ski suits, particularly at the hips as well as knees, elbows, and forearms. The material has since been widely used in protective garments and equipment for other extreme sports, the military, law enforcement, and other industries. But until now no one had yet introduced it into the medical field. That is essentially why we came in, working with the creator of the technology, the British company D3O, to develop a hip protector from this new material that would be superior to what was currently on the market. The key thing about D3O is that it is an “intelligent” material—at rest, it is very soft and pliable, and it simply changes shape according to whatever pressure is applied to it providing the pressure is applied slowly. But with a sudden impact, such as the impact from a fall onto the hip, the molecules rearrange instantly, and the material becomes totally rigid. As soon as that force is dissipated into the material, the molecules relax and unbind so that the material instantly becomes soft again. What you have essentially is a material that is soft and pliable at all times, except at the moment of impact.
CEOCFO: In terms of shelf life, will this last virtually forever, or does the composition change over time? Dr. Robins: Fall-Safe® Hip Protector pads will maintain their impact-protection capabilities for at least three years. Because they need to be replaced far less frequently than many older-model hip protectors, they provide significant cost-saving potential.
CEOCFO: Were the developers particularly looking to solve this problem, or did this come about when they were looking for something else? Dr. Robins: D3O came about initially because the material’s inventor became aware of the significant forearm bruising among slalom skiers, who lead with their forearms hitting the poles. The need then was for a material that was impact protecting but also soft and flexible, and which would not add bulkiness.
CEOCFO: What gives you the confidence that people will wear the protectors if they are comfortable? Dr. Robins: People at risk—particularly the elderly—tend not to acknowledge their physical frailty, and especially their susceptibility to a fall, and are thus not naturally inclined to wear hip protectors. So even while those who take care of them know very well what can happen, and promote the use of hip protectors, getting over the reluctance to wear them has been a major challenge. What got me interested in this field was that, even as a physician myself, like many people I always thought of hip fractures as, yes, a major injury, but with surgery, a two or three week hospitalization, and then a recovery period, that is it. As I looked more deeply, I came to recognize that a hip fracture is much more serious than that. As I have since often said, hip fracture is not just a fracture—it can be a life-altering event. Over 20% of people who suffer hip fractures die within a year because, essentially, they lose their mobility, which leads to other ultimately fatal morbidities like pneumonia or heat failure. They also often have an increased fear of falling and become even more immobile and thus even more at risk of life threatening illnesses due to increased immobility. The statistics have been well established. The second important statistic is that between 20% and 40% of those suffering a hip fracture are permanently dependent on others. In fact, many who had lived independently are forced into living the rest of their lives in nursing homes. In addition to these mortality and morbidity components, there also is a negative economic impact, as well as the loss of independence—to say nothing of the enormous burden on family caregivers. That is what makes the problem much bigger than just having a fracture and getting it repaired.
CEOCFO: Would you foresee a time where older people see they are in danger and start to use this as a preventative measure? Dr. Robins: Absolutely. Both the challenge and opportunity is that we believe many people are unaware of the severe consequences of hip fractures. Even as a physician, I had not thought much about the extent of the problem. The more people who become aware of the devastating consequences of hip fractures, the more we believe people will look to better protection against them. Fall-Safe Hip Protectors, with the unique impact-protecting material D3O, we believe are the perfect solution. Given the large number of people at risk, there has been a significant focus for several decades on preventing falls. But despite this ongoing effort, falls continue to occur at a very high rate among older adults, both in nursing homes and outside such facilities. As a result, the focus has more recently shifted from fall prevention to fracture prevention, including drugs to treat osteoporosis. Hip protectors play an important role as a way of providing non-pharmaceutical, noninvasive, very inexpensive protection should a fall onto the hip occur. It is just a question of getting people at risk to wear them, and that comes down to making the hip protectors more comfortable.
CEOCFO: Where are you in the process of selling, commercializing and bringing to the U.S.; what is happening today? Dr. Robins: We launched the Fall-Safe Hip Protector in October of 2012 with a fairly wide media campaign. Our initial approach is to focus on where there are significant populations of at risk older adults—primarily nursing homes, senior living, and other long-term care facilities. We have been marketing and working to educate nursing home management, including those focused on financial, risk, and medical and nursing management, of the scope of the problem and that there is a new technology that offers a far better and more cost-effective solution. Direct laboratory testing under controlled conditions has demonstrated that Fall-Safe® Hip Protectors are much more effective at absorbing impact than any other hip protector on the market. So we have a combination of better efficacy and significantly improved comfort that will encourage facilities to bring this technology into their fracture-prevention protocols. Most nursing home and assisted living institutions are already using hip protectors, but have experienced the challenges we have been talking about, including lack of compliance by patients. They are aware of the financial risk and their exposure to lawsuits. Also, they understand the importance of improving their quality of care to provide a competitive advantage. Lastly, Medicare is very much involved. If facilities are able to improve their quality of care, they are less likely to be impacted negatively by Medicare restrictions that are coming into play. Medicare is no longer reimbursing hospitals for many injuries and rehospitalizations that are deemed preventable, and this concept is moving into the nursing home industry as well. We also are reaching out to all of the VA nursing homes across the country. The VA is very focused on addressing this problem. Clinicians in the VA’s research center in Florida, in particular, are leaders in this field and strongly promote the use of hip protectors for at-risk patients in all VA institutions. Our plan is to focus first on educating those policy makers who are in the position to encourage or implement policies in their various institutions that lead to better outcomes, in this case for more effective hip fracture prevention. It is a combination of education and economics, so we are interacting with purchasing agents and directors who are already buying products that they know are not as good as they would like them to be.
CEOCFO: You would be selling in bulk to the institutions and then they would pass those along to the patients? Dr. Robins: Exactly. We are focused on introducing Fall-Safe Hip Protectors and getting them onto institutional purchasing lists. We can readily demonstrate to them our superior efficacy and comfort. Our competitive pricing also is an important factor. We are deliberately pricing Fall-Safe Hip Protectors competitively so that cost will not be a barrier to adoption. We also are starting up, in parallel, marketing directly to the consumer. The key here is to make families and people with elderly parents aware of the devastating consequences of hip fractures both to the elderly person and his or her family caregivers, and how their lives would be drastically changed if their loved one became incapacitated due to a hip fracture. Our website, www.medprotech.com, allows members of the public to buy the product directly online.
CEOCFO: It is reasonably priced? Dr. Robins: That is a key point. Fall-Safe Hip Protectors are more effective and more comfortable—so why not charge a premium? But my feeling is that this technology deserves to be out there, so let’s not have price be an issue. Competitive pricing will help speed adoption. Improving healthcare delivery happens to be a personal professional objective that I have pursued throughout my career—finding and working only on technologies that can make a real difference.
CEOCFO: Where is the product manufactured, and are you able to ramp up quickly if you become flooded with requests? Dr. Robins: Fall-Safe Hip Protector pads are manufactured in England by the company that invented the D3O technology. The company has sufficient manufacturing capabilities in the U.K., and it also is currently exploring setting up similar facilities in the U.S. because demand is growing very quickly in all the various industries the material is used in, and now including healthcare. All the product development is done. Manufacturing is readily scalable and we have ramped up quickly, so that is not an issue.
CEOCFO: Is Medical Protection Technologies funded to get through the next steps? Dr. Robins: Currently, yes. Our group consists of people I brought together from my previous enterprises who are all experts in marketing medical devices and particularly in working on campaigns focused on positively impacting the standard of healthcare. The group is all invested in the company and not drawing salaries, thus contributing to our low overhead. So from that point of view we are positioned well. We are nevertheless interested in additional investments, which would allow us to accelerate our move into direct-to-consumer marketing, with its attendant higher costs, without waiting for additional institutional sales volume to generate the necessary cashflow.
CEOCFO: Why should the business and investment community pay attention to Medical Protection Technologies?
Dr. Robins:
We offer a unique and more effective solution to a huge and growing problem
that most people can identify with. There are more than 1.6 million nursing
home beds in the U.S. alone. Roughly 10% of the population over 65 years of
age is at risk for hip fracture. On a population level, an increasing number
of people are at risk, resulting in a growing problem that is significant
for all the reasons we have talked about. It is thus a steadily growing
market. Our role as seasoned healthcare marketing and communications experts
is to make more people aware of the risks and consequences of hip fractures,
and of this new and far better solution to help prevent them. Most people
know someone who has suffered a hip fracture and can thus quickly identify
with the need. The Fall-Safe Hip Protector is absolutely not a me-too
product—it is something that makes a significant difference, and indeed we
believe it has the opportunity to be truly transformative. |
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“Direct laboratory testing under controlled conditions has demonstrated that Fall-Safe® Hip Protectors are much more effective at absorbing impact than any other hip protector on the market. So we have a combination of better efficacy and significantly improved comfort that will encourage facilities to bring this technology into their fracture-prevention protocols.”- D. Stephen Robins, M.D. |
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