Osiris Biomed 3D has been selected to compete in MecklerMedia’s New York Inside 3D Printing Conference and Expo’s Startup Competition on Thursday April 16th at 11:45am at the Javits Center. The Startup Competition at Inside 3D Printing is the hottest pitch event in the industry, with participants raising more than $6 million in 2014. Five promising startups, selected by Tyler Benster, will pitch for five minutes in front of a panel of VCs and entrepreneurs to determine this year’s winner.

Osiris Biomed 3D is a biomedical company that plans to offer 3D printed patient-specific implants made in real-time from patients’ own medical scans using proprietary software. Upon FDA approval, surgeons will be able to use their system to design and print custom implants for immediate use in their surgeries.

Watch: MDT Live: The Impact of 3D Printing on Healthcare (Now Available on Demand!)

At present, high cost, poor fit and long lead times for custom implants and models limit patient accessibility and overall health outcomes. Osiris Biomed 3D has applied for a patent for single anesthetic reconstructive surgery, which will allow a patient to be scanned, a custom device or implant printed, sterilized and surgically implanted “on the operating table,” or – all in one surgery. This innovative business model will decrease the lead time to surgery, decrease the number of surgical operations and hospital visits for patients, and decrease cost to both patients, hospitals and insurers.

Further, Osiris Biomed 3D’s highly mobile 3D printing CONEX for the military can establish operating suites in a theater of operations, reducing time to surgery for wounded soldiers, decreasing costs, and drastically decreasing inventories.

CEO Theodore Gerstle, MD, a Harvard-trained plastic surgeon and his brother, COO Christopher Gerstle, an intellectual property attorney with an engineering background, are seeking funding for their company.

The idea came to Dr. Gerstle several years ago when he was in training at a prominent Boston hospital. He and his medical team had spent 6 weeks with an off-site manufacturer virtually planning the facial reconstruction of a 74-year-old man with squamous cell cancer of the jaw via custom implants.  The day of surgery, the oncologic surgeon began the operation, but due to the appearance of the tissues, he needed to remove more bone that had been consumed by cancer since his CT scan just weeks earlier.  This rendered the weeks-old custom implant useless. The patient had to be awakened, and now, instead of one surgery, the man would need to return to the operating room for at least two more operations.  Additionally, the $12,000 spent on the implants was wasted. A new CT scan was necessary and a new custom implant needed to be designed.

Dr. Gerstle says, “Scenarios like this play out in hospitals across the US every day – costing millions of dollars and resulting in unnecessary surgeries.  What if a 3D custom implant design studio could be put inside every operating room – empowering surgeons to print implants, cutting guides and surgical tools – in minutes – during one surgery, instead of days and weeks over several surgeries?  We are not just reducing the cost of custom implants, we are eliminating entire surgeries. We are very grateful for the opportunity to pitch our business plan at the Inside 3d Printing Expo.”