SmartTRAK reviews the evolving trauma startup landscape in 2025, spotlighting five innovators, followed by a comparative chart mapping 19 emerging companies.

The Trauma Market is undergoing a subtle but significant evolution. Amid growing pressure on hospitals to improve outcomes, reduce costs, and avoid complications like surgical site infections, a wave of early-stage companies is rethinking the fundamentals of fracture care. From infection-mitigating implants to ultra-low-profile nails and percutaneous plating systems, these startups are betting that innovation in surgical efficiency, implant design, and value-based care will ultimately reshape the trauma landscape.

Historically seen as a commoditized space dominated by legacy original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), trauma is now attracting mission-driven founders, surgeons and academic engineers building platforms with real clinical intent, whether to reduce the burden of open fractures, address fragility fracture under-treatment, or to simplify procedures that have seen little change in decades. While most remain pre-commercial, several are advancing toward regulatory milestones, clinical validation, or meaningful early traction.

In this article, SmartTRAK highlights 19 companies with trauma-specific implants and technologies, categorized by platform/product, commercial stage, latest funding round, regulatory status and relevant activity callouts. Of these, SmartTRAK also provides a deep dive on five companies to watch in the Trauma Market in 2025 and beyond.

Company Spotlights: Five to Watch in Trauma

Dr. Brian Cole discusses the novel OSSIO Kneebar procedure in an interview with SmartTRAK at OSET 2025 in Las Vegas. 

Brian Cole, MD, orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist at Rush Health System, discussed the OSSIO Kneebar procedure for the management of subchondral insufficiency fracture of the femur and tibia, utilizing the bio-integrative OSSIOFiber 4.0mm Cannulated Trimmable Fixation Nail, in an interview with SmartTRAK at the Orthopaedic Summit (OSET) 2025 Annual Meeting held September 18-25, 2025 in  Las Vegas, NV.

To find out more about the OSSIO Kneebar procedure and what makes it so revolutionary, click on the following video (11:49 min). A link to download a complete transcript of the interview is also provided below. 

Interview Transcript

Hi everybody, it's Andy Knapik with SmartTRAK. I'm here at the OSET meeting in Las Vegas and I'm joined with Dr. Brian Cole. Thanks for joining me today.

Dr. Brian Cole: Thanks for having me, Andy.

Yes. I've talked a lot in the past about OSSIO. They have some really great products and one of the products that's out now, it's called KneeBar. It's a very unique product. So I thought it'd be great if you, being so involved with the product, you could walk through it and tell us about it.

BC: Yes, so for clarity, KneeBar is probably what we would say the procedure, I guess is a KneeBar procedure.

Okay.

BC: The device itself is OSSIO fiber, so it's their core technology, which is I'd say bio-talented, bio-replaceable and gets replaced and/or turns into bone over time. So we know that's the construct for OSSIO fiber, and the device itself is a cannulated trimmable fixation nail.

So the KneeBar procedure basically is a procedure that will address ...

Want to learn more about the novel OSSIO Kneebar procedure? Click the button below to download and read the complete transcript of SmartTRAK's interview with Brian Cole, MD, conducted by  Andy Knapik, SmartTRAK Sr. Analyst, Soft Tissue & Arthroscopic Technologies.

Gregory Berlet, MD, shares insights on trends in foot and ankle surgery, including MIS, ASCs, orthobiologics, and AI planning, in an interview with SmartTRAK.

Christina Goudy, co-founder and CEO of Reach Orthopaedics, discusses the company and its new subacromial spacer device in an interview with SmartTRAK.

In a recent interview with SmartTRAK, Christina Goudy, co-founder and CEO of Reach Orthopaedics, discussed the company’s new subacromial (SA) spacer for the treatment of massive, irreparable rotator cuff tears, its strategic direction and company highlights.

To find out more about the company, its differentiated technologies, products and growth strategy, click on the following video (26:57 min). Interview topics by timecode are provided below, as is a link to download a complete transcript of the interview.

Interview Outline by Timecode:

• 00:50  Introduction to Reach Orthopaedics and Christina Goudy.
• 03:15  Image of SA spacer device.
• 07:05  Christina’s background and running a med device startup.
• 14:48  Age of the company, FDA pathway and funding.
• 18:16  Goal for sales to start.
• 19:42  What the surgeons are saying about the device, specs and sizes.
• 23:40  Exit strategy.

Click the button below to download and read the complete transcript of SmartTRAK's interview with Christina Goudy, co-founder and CEO of Reach Orthopaedics, conducted by  Andy Knapik, SmartTRAK Sr. Analyst, Soft Tissue & Arthroscopic Technologies.

Nicolas Piuzzi, MD, discusses the upcoming 2025 Robotic Orthopedic Concepts and Knowledge Symposium (ROCKS) in an interview with SmartTRAK.

Dr. Nicolas Piuzzi, enterprise vice chair of research for the Department of Orthopedics at the Cleveland Clinic and co-chair of the Robotic Orthopedic Concepts and Knowledge Symposium (ROCKS) spoke with SmartTRAK about the second annual ROCKS meeting being held in Cleveland, OH on August 15-16, 2025. In the following video, Dr. Piuzzi discusses the purpose behind this cutting-edge event in the field of arthroplasty robotics and his vision for the symposium going forward (9:43 min). A link to download a full transcript of the interview is also provided below. 

SmartTRAK: Hi, this is Elise Wolf, GM of Orthopedics and Enabling Technology at SmartTRAK. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Nicolas Piuzzi, who is the Enterprise Vice Chair of Research for the Department of Orthopedics at the Cleveland Clinic. He's an orthopedic surgeon and also co-chair of the Robotic Orthopedic Concepts and Knowledge Symposium, otherwise known as ROCKS. The second Annual ROCKS Symposium is coming up on August 15th and 16th at the Huntington Convention Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Piuzzi, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.

Nicolas Piuzzi, MD: Thank you, Elise, for the opportunity and for your passion for the field, and happy to be here with you today.

As co-chair of the second annual ROCKS meeting, how do you see the meeting evolving from the inaugural meeting and what's your vision for this year, the second year of the meeting?

NP: Our vision for the second Annual ROCKS Symposium is to solidify on the success that we had on the first meeting and kind of setting the stage for the premier clinical robotic event in orthopedics. So we want this to be that event where innovation in the field of technology and robotics meets the real world application. So it's that environment where you can have both the engineers, the developers, be able to merge with the clinicians, and be able to see how to use this technology on clinical workflows with real data and in a true evidence-based adoption and pathway. And beyond just having a showcasing of technology, we want to ...

NASS Executive Director and CEO Eric Muehlbauer discusses NASS’s new Innovation NetWORK Summit in an interview with SmartTRAK. 

SmartTRAK Senior Analyst Erin Dorgan interviewed North American Spine Society (NASS) Executive Director and CEO Eric Muehlbauer, MJ, CAE, at the new NASS Innovation NetWORK Summit held June 20-21, 2025 in Chicago. The Innovation NetWORK Summit is a novel meeting where surgeons, engineers, medtech and other spine professional can network and collaborate about bringing innovative spine devices to market.

To find out more about this new meeting, click on the following video to listen to the interview (11:46 min). A link to download a complete transcript of the interview is also provided below.

Interview Transcript

SmartTRAK: Hi, this is Erin Dorgan with SmartTRAK. Today I am talking with Eric Muehlbauer, CEO and executive director of the North American Spine Society. Eric, thank you for taking the time to meet with me today. Can you share a little bit more about the meeting? Why is it important? And give some more details behind it.

Eric Muehlbauer: Thanks for having me on. We're very interested to see where this goes. NASS has always evolved as it needed to based on what's going on in the field. For a long time we were almost viewed as anti-industry with our ethics rules and things like that. What we've realized is that the field needs us to help stimulate innovation. There's lots of people who do innovation-type meetings or different tracks. We've got a particular reputation in the field, especially with payers, that might make this a little bit more interesting and get a little more traction. So I kind of call where we're at now, NASS 3.0, because we've had to evolve because of ...

Click the button below to download and read the complete transcript of SmartTRAK's interview with NASS Executive Director and CEO Eric Muehlbauer, conducted by Erin Dorgan, SmartTRAK Sr. Analyst, Spine & Bone Replacement.

SmartTRAK spotlights OSSIO in an interview at AANA 2025 in Washington, DC. 

Bryan Jones, vice president of marketing and medical education at OSSIO, discusses the company’s novel bio-integrative OSSIOfiber implants in an interview with SmartTRAK at the Arthroscopy Association of North America (AANA) 2025 Meeting in Washington DC. 

Watch the following video to learn more about OSSIO and its novel technology. (17:50 min.) A link to download a complete transcript of the interview is also provided below. 

Hey everybody, it's Andy Knapik, senior analyst with SmartTRAK covering sports medicine arthroscopy. I'm here at the AANA meeting in Washington, DC, and right now I'm joined by Bryan Jones, an old friend of mine who is now what, VP of marketing, right?

Bryan Jones: Yes.

For OSSIO. And OSSIO is really this great up-and-coming company. We've profiled them in the past, and I think their products are really incredible and the things that they're doing are really amazing. When you first joined OSSIO you came to me and said ‘Hey, you need to come check this out. This stuff's really cool.’ So I went and looked at it and the first thing I see is these kind of bioabsorbable pins, which 25 years ago I started my career by selling Bionix, which is absorbable pins and screws and stuff. Back then you could bend the pins. They were never all that sturdy. So, when you first talked to me about this I was a little dubious, and then I put my hands on one and you couldn't bend it, couldn't bend it at all. And I thought ‘Well, that's really interesting.’ And then you guys came out with a compression staple, which is completely amazing.

BJ: Yeah, right.

The only one on the market, right?

BJ: Only one in the world. Yes, the only non-permanent compression staple ever.

So talk to me about just about OSSIO, about the product. What makes OSSIO products as good as they are?

BJ: Yes. I'll touch on where you started when you said you and I first met probably what, six years ago now? And your initial reaction is probably like 10,000 other reactions that we got back then. The hardest thing we ever had to do was convince people that this was not a typical biocomposite or bioabsorbable implant. That was the hardest hurdle. To do that, we had to really tell them about ...

Click the button below to download and read the complete transcript of SmartTRAK's interview with Bryan Jones, Ossio's VP of Marketing & Medical Education, conducted by  Andy Knapik, SmartTRAK Senior Analyst, Soft Tissue Fixation and Arthroscopic Enabling Technologies.

VISIE CEO Doug Fairbanks discusses the company’s 3D scanning technologies and its vision for the future of enabling technology in orthopedics in an interview with SmartTRAK.

At this year’s American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Annual Meeting in San Diego, orthopedic startups were in the spotlight in the second annual OrthoPitch event, a Shark Tank-like competition sponsored, in part, by SmartTRAK. Medtech startup VISIE rose to the top to win the event out of forty applicants. VISIE’s optical scanning technology uses white and infrared light, provides non-invasive ‘snap’ registration in under a second, and can be used with or without CT to drive surgical robotic arm positioning without tracking arrays. Doug Fairbanks, CEO of VISIE, discussed the company and its goal to introduce pinless tracking for orthopedic procedures in a recent interview with SmartTRAK.

To find out more, listen to the following video (18:18 min). Below is a link to download the complete transcript of the interview. 

SmartTRAK: Hi, this is Elise Wolf, VP and GM of Orthopedics and Enabling Technology at SmartTRAK. Today, I'm speaking with Doug Fairbanks, CEO of VISIE. Welcome, Doug. And I want to start out by congratulating you and the entire VISIE team for winning this year's AAOS OrthoPitch event.

Doug Fairbanks: Hi. Thank you, Elise. Thank you for having me. And we're all excited.

It's no small feat. I think it was 40 applicants vying for a spot to pitch their company and technology at the finals. And then you were up against three other companies in the finals, 16 BIT, Auctus Surgical and SentryX to be crowned this year's winner. I'm really excited to share with our subscribers a little bit more about VISIE and your vision for the company. So why don't you give a little background about yourself and about the company?

DF: Thank you. First of all, that was a really remarkable competition for us, and the competition was really stiff, right? We talked to a lot of folks in a lot of places, and it's rare that we run up against competition that I think is so profound and so talented, and delivers so much value for patients in the future. So we were very pleased to be the top on that day and we're excited for the recognition of the company. My name's Doug Fairbanks. I'm the president and CEO of VISIE, formerly Advanced Scanners. I've been in orthopedics for about 15 years. I spent the entirety of my career kind of at the intersection of technology, the OR and commercialization.

I've had the pleasure of working in a lot of different roles with a bunch of different companies. Zimmer, DePuy, I worked at Brainlab in the orthopedics unit for a while, and was really close to how technology integrates with patients. And I'm excited that when I saw what Advanced Scanners was doing at the time, I stopped dead in my tracks. I turned to my wife and I said, ‘I have to go there. I have to go work at that company. That is something special. That is something that's going to change the world.’ And here I am a little over two and a half years later and the company is doing remarkable things. I feel bad that I get to stand in front of everybody and take credit and say we're great. But there's a bunch of really remarkable, very intelligent people who work in the office here, who show up every day and push to the very edge of what is scientifically possible for the benefit of patients and surgeons.

I love it. I think what you're doing is really a paradigm shift in the enabling technology space. So could you describe a little bit about what is the technology with the 3D scanners and what really you're aiming to do, and how you're looking to change the landscape?

DF: When I think about the challenges of the OR, we really have to think as a startup, are we locked onto a problem? Do we see that there's an opportunity to do better? And years ago, I asked myself, ‘Hey, are computers and technology going to be more or less part of our lives going forward?’

I think surgeons are asking themselves the same question, ‘How do I use the benefits or utilize all that computing has to offer, while still integrating into my practice and treating patients in the only way that surgeons can do?’

So when we looked at the problem of robotics, navigation and AR-VR, we realized that ...

Click the button below to download the complete transcript of our interview with Visie President and CEO Douglas Fairbanks conducted by Elise Wolf, GM & VP, SmartTRAK Orthopedics & Quality.