Hip joint simulator developed at the Faculty of Engineering as part of the MALTAHIP project'
Driven to tackle the prevalent issue associated with the limited lifespan of prosthetic hip joints due to wear, the University of Malta and MCL Components Ltd have teamed up under the project named MALTAHIP to identify potential resolutions for this drawback. The interdisciplinary nature of this project requires the interdepartmental collaboration at the University of Malta, involving the Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering (Faculty of Engineering) and the Department of Anatomy (Faculty of Medicine and Surgery). The team is made up of a number of engineers from different backgrounds, a medical doctor, an orthopaedic surgeon and experts from the manufacturing industry and business.
Presently, around one million patients worldwide undergo total hip replacement surgery, accounting for an estimated global hip replacement market of EUR 4 billion. Due to the ever-increasing global population age, the demand for total hip replacement surgery is expected to further increase in order to support active aging societies. In fact, osteoarthritis is one of the top ten diseases in highly developed countries, with Switzerland and Germany placing the top two European countries having the highest rates of patients undergoing total hip joint replacements.
Project MALTAHIP is financed by the Malta Council for Science & Technology through FUSION: The R&I Technology Development Programme 2016. A total budget of EUR 194,593 is allocated for this project, with the University of Malta having a workshare value of €145,674. The overarching goal of the MALTAHIP project is to develop a novel prosthetic hip joint design that possesses improved levels of wear-resistance.
Prof. Pierre Schembri Wismayer M.D. is the inventor behind the novel hip joint design and also the leader of the MALTAHIP project. This project also forms part of a doctoral study currently being pursued by Mr Donald Dalli. This doctoral work is being supervised by Dr Ing. Joseph Buhagiar, and co-supervised by Prof. Pierre Schembri Wismayer MD and Dr Ing. Pierluigi Mollicone. Mr Ray Gatt, the Head of the Orthopaedics Department at Mater Dei Hospital, will provide consultations and feedback in relation to the design of the new hip joint prosthesis from the point of view of an orthopaedic surgeon. Mr Luke Satariano (CEO of MCL Components Ltd) will be providing the main necessary industrial manufacturing capabilities required in the project for the fabrication of the prosthetic hip joint prototypes.
The project will pave the way for the development of a novel prosthetic hip joint that can potentially be patented. A number of prosthetic hip joint prototypes that explore the novelty of the new design have already been fabricated. The performance of these prototypes will be tested inside a physical hip joint simulator, which is being developed at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Malta. The hip joint simulator is intended to replicate the in vivo conditions of the human hip and emulating the physical conditions during walking and other daily activates. The hip joint simulator will act as a platform to provide insight for current and future researchers to test analyse the wear performance. In light of this, the analysis of the implanted hip inside the hip joint simulator would facilitate the design for the finalized prosthetic hip joint.