Harvard Catalyst Profiles

The Harvard Global Orthopaedics Collaborative (HGOC) is an academic organization of Harvard-affiliated orthopaedic surgeons and trainees who share a passion for improving access to musculoskeletal healthcare globally. We engage in clinical and public health research, surgical training and education, advocacy at the national and international level, and device and systems innovation with our global partners. Forging long-term, bidirectional partnerships, we help create interventions to improve musculoskeletal trauma care delivery based on the needs identified by partners in the communities they serve. To scale these interventions, HGOC partners closely with SONA Global (Surgical and Orthopaedic Innovations for All patients Globally). SONA Global is a nonprofit organization that works to increase access to high-quality education and designs innovative and affordable medical devices to improve trauma and orthopaedic care. Fundamental to the shared work of HGOC and SONA Global is understanding the unique needs of the populations we aim to help. HGOC uses rigorous scientific methodology to design and execute studies within five domains: burden and epidemiology of injury, health system navigation, health system capacity, economic impact of injury, and outcomes and cost-effectiveness of treatment. This improves our understanding of trauma care systems and the needs of patients and healthcare providers. Together with our partners, we share our findings with hospital leadership and national health ministries, publish peer-reviewed manuscripts in leading medical journals, and present our work at numerous international conferences. Using knowledge generated by our research, we work collaboratively with our partners to design feasible interventions to improve trauma and orthopaedic care. Research serves as the foundation upon which we build our educational curricula, our advocacy and policy agenda, and develop affordable innovations. Using feedback from local orthopaedic providers and knowledge gaps identified from our research, we provide orthopaedic education to providers across the globe. We take advantage of both in-person and virtual teaching mediums. Our in-person education includes mentorship of local surgeons, designing and implementing in-person training courses for orthopaedic surgeons and non-physician orthopaedic providers, and teaching by Harvard surgeons in operating theaters. To date, HGOC and SONA Global have partnered to organize 10 free virtual conferences, training 3,000 surgeons from 80 countries, in three languages. Our multilingual, free virtual education conferences with Harvard-affiliated faculty help surgeons around the world gain the knowledge they need to care for complex injuries. Educational videos from these conferences are also available for free online. We aim to translate our research findings into actionable policy initiatives. In Malawi, we worked with an expert panel of orthopaedic providers to create a consensus document defining technical priorities for orthopaedic trauma care development, and propose strategies to address the highest priority challenges. This document will be shared with the Malawian Ministry of Health and hopefully serve as a guide for foreign aid organizations and donors who seek to support orthopaedic system development in Malawi. This is a novel methodology that we will publish in a peer-reviewed journal and which we are replicating in collaboration with our partners in Ethiopia, South Sudan, and The Gambia. We also aim to improve orthopaedic trauma care through low-cost, durable, and effective device innovation. SONA Global has launched two medical devices to date, a novel fracture external fixator clamp, AEFIX, and a low-cost wound vacuum pump, VATARA. Our affordable medical devices bring the costs of open fracture stabilization to less than 1% of the current industry standard. AEFIX clamps are used to assemble customizable frames for fracture external fixation, an essential tool for managing open fractures and polytrauma. Industry standard clamps cost US$500 which is cost prohibitive for the world’s poor. AEFIX costs just US$5 and is safe and effective. Similarly, industry standard wound vacuum pumps can cost as much as US$40,000. Our device VATARA – a low-cost suction pump that applies gentle, regulatable suction to acute or chronic wounds – costs just US$100. To date VATARA has been used in 7 countries with excellent clinical results. We at HGOC and SONA Global, are a passionate team of orthopaedic surgeons, orthopaedic trainees, engineers, and global health experts who aim to make basic, essential musculoskeletal trauma care available to all patients, regardless of country, context, or finances. We welcome partnerships with other organizations, hospitals, and governments who share our vision for global equity in fracture care.