Via Christi and WSU Team Up for Promising Joint Venture in Orthopaedics
Published Aug 17, 2009
Wichita’s Via Christi Health System is proving to be the hippest joint in town. The state’s largest provider of health-care services is revolutionizing the orthopaedic industry through the creation of bioengineered implants. Unlike their solid, metal predecessors known to weaken bone mass, the new implants encourage bone-cell growth and are made of the strong, lightweight composites used in the aviation industry.
“Our goal is to create devices that will last longer and, when implanted, function much like patients’ original hips and knees,” says Dr. Paul Wooley, director of research at Via Christi’s Orthopaedic Research Institute and research professor at Wichita State University. “While it takes some time to get started, in the long term we expect our work to result in vastly improved implantable hips and knees made from composite materials.”
As the former director of research for orthopaedic surgery and professor of orthopaedic surgery, immunology and microbiology, and biomedical engineering at Detroit’s Wayne State University Medical School, Wooley was recruited by Via Christi in 2007 after academics at WSU and Via Christi teamed up to discuss the possibilities. In March 2008, Via Christi’s Orthopaedic Research Institute opened a biocompatibility lab at WSU, which also is home to the National Institute of Aviation Research.
“This is a great location, because we have everything here that we need: WSU’s National Institute of Aviation Research and ORI, along with composite manufacturers, WSU’s biologists, engineers and chemists, and close connections with implant manufacturers,” Wooley says. “We’re trying to involve everything and everyone in the project, so we can address questions and fix any problems rapidly, as we go along.”
Their work is projected to attract at least $5 million in new external research to Kansas over the next five years. The project comes with a lofty price tag, with much of its funding from the Kansas Bioscience Authority, an independent state entity. In April 2008, the KBA awarded $912,000 to Via Christi’s ORI and WSU to support the creation of their orthopedic immunogenetic laboratory. Via Christi also was granted part of a KBA planning grant of $200,000 to prepare a $50 million, 10-year design and development plan.
“Given the level of excitement about the project within the industry and community, I feel confident that, one way or another, this project will move forward,” Wooley says. “This plan was well under way long before my arrival in Wichita, so the whole project has been of great importance to the surgeons, scientists and Via Christi administrators for a number of years.”
Story by Melanie Hill
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