The Cadiz aeronautical company Titania has developed, thanks to an R+D+i project financed by CTA (Technological Corporation of Andalusia) and with the participation of the University of Cadiz, reusable surgical material made of carbon fiber composite material. In this way, Titania applies aerospace materials to trauma operating rooms and opens a new line of business that allows it to diversify in the manufacture of surgical instruments and equipment through the use of carbon fiber.
Titania’s CEO, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Chacón, highlights that, thanks to CTA’s support, “we have carried out a new knowledge transfer process. It should be remembered that Titania, in its origin, arises as a result of a University – Company transfer process. In this sense, the Quirucomp project is an example of knowledge transfer between industrial sectors, in this case from aeronautics to healthcare. It is on the knowledge management model that Titania bases its development and success as a company”.
Silvia de los Santos, technical manager of the Aerospace and Production Processes sector at CTA, affirms that Quirucomp is a project that represents “an important milestone in the diversification of an sme aerospace, which leverages its extensive experience in composite materials to drive significant improvement in another sector such as healthcare”.
De los Santos emphasizes that the development has enabled the manufacture of surgical instruments. The carbon fiber tabletop, which is much lighter than the current metal one and transparent to X-radiation, is made of carbon fiber. Thus, for example, it makes it easier for personnel working in trauma operating rooms to install a much lighter, equally resistant work table that is also transparent to radiation, even allowing doctors to estimate the dimensions of fissures in real time and enabling bone alignment.
At present, the table and instruments are a prototype that has been loaned to the Puerta del Mar Hospital (Cadiz), so that it can be used continuously and its wear and tear in use can be checked, as well as to consider future improvements before its industrialization and launch on the market.
Project impact
The main objective of the project is to establish the technological principles that will allow Titania to create a new line of business oriented to the manufacture of surgical instruments and equipment using carbon fiber. This would generate the germ of a type of industrial activity that has not existed until now in Andalusia.
From a sanitary point of view, the instrumentation to be manufactured would allow for improve patient safety and clinical outcomes. These improvements would be based on the design and manufacture of surgical instruments and operating table accessories used in orthopedic surgery and traumatology, using materials and manufacturing processes from the aerospace sector. Specifically, the work has been aimed at achieving the following technical improvements: customizing the design, reducing the mass of the selected instruments, increasing radio-transparency and providing new functionalities thanks to the doping with radio-opaque cores.
The TEP-231 Corrosion and Protection research group of the University of Cadiz (UCA) has participated in the project, thus achieving the transfer of knowledge from the scientific-university field to business activity.
