Tag: 2009

Published: April 21, 2009
Reflects Robust Growth of Client Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci(R) System

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., April 21 /PRNewswire/ — The Chamberlain Group, producers of anatomically accurate surgical trainers, today announced their new Uterine Robotic Surgery Trainer.

The trainer is a lifelike, full-scale model of the human uterus and vaginal canal. It is composed of Chamberlain’s proprietary polymer that looks and feels like living tissue, has appropriate elasticity and can be cut and sutured.

The Uterine Trainer has a replaceable uterus which permits unlimited practice. Chamberlain Group co-founder Lisa Chamberlain noted that while the trainer is primarily designed for robotic skill training, it may also be utilized for any abdominal approach training including laparoscopy. Highly accurate, mimetic tissue anatomical trainers provide a more realistic and costeffective alternative to traditional training in the operating room, with animals, or with cadavers.

Physicians using the new Uterine Trainer may practice robotic skills used in myomectomy (removal of uterine fibroid tumors), hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) and sacrocolpopexy (correcting vaginal vault prolapse). Following a practice myomectomy using the trainer, the physician may perform a colpotomy (separating the uterus from the vagina) which is a skill performed during a hysterectomy. The remaining vaginal canal may then be affixed to mesh and a sacrocolpopexy performed by attaching the mesh to the available sacral tissue.

According to Ms. Chamberlain, the Uterine Trainer was developed in direct response to the company’s client, Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (Nasdaq: ISRG), a recognized pioneer and leader in robotic surgery, for training on their da Vinci(R) Surgical System. In robotic surgery physicians use computer-assisted surgical instrumentation yielding greater precision, dexterity and control, the sum of which enables enhanced patient safety, reduced blood loss, less post-operative pain and discomfort, less risk of infection, shorter hospital stay, faster recovery and less scarring. Growth of hysterectomy procedures using the da Vinci(R) Surgical System is forecast at 150% per year and medical analysts estimate that approximately 600,000 hysterectomies are performed annually in the US alone.

About The Chamberlain Group

Founded in 1999, The Chamberlain Group is the worldwide leader in the development of a broad range of custom anatomically accurate surgical trainers that capture the consistency and response of living tissue. The models are used for cardiothoracic, vascular, general and gastrointestinal, reproductive, urological, and pulmonary training.

The Chamberlain Group works with more than 150 leading medical device manufacturers and teaching institutions in 40 countries. The company is based in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. www.thecgroup.com

About Intuitive Surgical

Intuitive Surgical leads the development and commercialization of robotic technology designed to extend the benefits of minimally invasive surgery. Intuitive’s products can provide surgeons with all the clinical and technical capabilities of traditional open surgery while enabling them to operate through tiny incisions.

Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci(R) Surgical System combines a high definition 3D visualization for the surgeon along with the ability to precisely maneuver an endoscope, and a variety of articulating EndoWrist(R) Instruments using three or four robotic arms. All of this combined with an intuitive, ergonomic interface enables breakthrough surgical capabilities.

Intuitive Surgical(R) da Vinci(R), da Vinci(R)S, and EndoWrist(R) are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intuitive Surgical, Inc.

Contacts:
The Chamberlain Group
Lisa Chamberlain
Vice President/Managing Partner
413 528 7744
lisa@thecgroup.com

Original Article from: http://markets.on.nytimes.com

April 13, 2009
Life Sciences, Devices, Surgery
From Movie Sets to Operating Rooms, Chamberlain Group Turns Special Effects Biz into Healthcare Winner
Ryan McBride 4/13/09

Before computer animation took hold of the movie industry, spaceships, exploding cities, dislodged body parts, and other scene-stealing special effects were crafted by highly skilled model makers. But after decades spent in entertainment, Lisa and Eric Chamberlain have taken their skills in the entertainment and special effects businesses and applied them to provide realistic anatomical models of human organs and tissues for the medical market.

In fact, the wife-and-husband team are running a growing western Massachusetts company, The Chamberlain Group, which counts among its customers medical devices powerhouses Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX) and Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) as well as respected teaching hospitals like Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The firm, which serves the medical market exclusively, deftly blends traditional model-making techniques with advances in imaging and computer-graphics technology to make models for surgical training and product demonstrations.

Take the company’s sinus trainer, which consists of a head and neck model with replaceable sinuses. Entellus Medical, a Maple Grove, MN, medical devices firm, began using the models last summer to train surgeons how to use its catheter-based surgical tool for treating chronic sinusitis.

“It’s extremely real in terms of the sinus anatomy,” says Dick Cassidy, vice president of sales at Entellus. Training with the surgical models takes about an hour in the surgeon’s office—much cheaper and more convenient than flying surgeons from around the country to be trained on the device in a central lab with real human cadavers, he notes.

How is it done? The Chamberlain Group, which began making surgical models in the late 1990s, has perfected a technique that melds art and science, Lisa Chamberlain, vice president of the company, explains. Computed tomography (CT) scans of living subjects provide images of human organs with precise dimensions. The company then uses haptics technology—which enables digital models to be made with a touch-sensitive controller—to craft 3-D models of the organs. Those digital models are made into 3-D molds with special printing machines.

Here’s where the artistic part comes in. The firm uses proprietary combinations of silicon and polymers to create lifelike human tissues. By using varying ratios of silicon and polymer, the firm’s artists can control the elasticity, firmness, and other characteristics of the faux human tissues.

The company’s wares range from simple model replacement veins to complex organs like its impressive beating heart (see the lifelike model beating away in this video clip). The beating heart, which has been sold to customers such as Medtronic, has fake muscle tissue that expands when air pressure from an electric-powered pump is applied to an expandable mesh material inside of the tissue. The firm has even patented the beating heart model, Lisa Chamberlain says.

The Chamberlains’ transition from special effects to surgical models couldn’t have been scripted. The couple, who met while working for New York-based special effects company R/GA in the early 1980s, had previously worked on action movies such as Event Horizon and The Matrix. (Eric Chamberlain, a former head of physical effects at R/GA, led the design and construction of an array of some 120 cameras used to film action scenes in The Matrix.) Lisa Chamberlain, who was trained at Yale School of Drama, worked on the production side of the business.

But as the special effects business shifted to computer-animated effects, the Chamberlains sought new markets for their services, company spokesman Edward Agne told me. Lisa Chamberlain says that the she and her husband decided to move full on into the medical market after attending a Society of Thoracic Surgeons meeting in 2000, where they saw that many medical devices firms there were using anatomical models they had made for another distributor.

“We thought, maybe there’s something here,” Chamberlain says.

The company, founded in 1999, now employs about 20 people at its facility in Great Barrington, where it designs, builds, and ships surgical and anatomical simulacra to customers in 40 countries worldwide. Not a bad model to follow.

Original Article from: xconomy.com