Ceremony Details

During the gala ceremony that took place at the Esplanade Concert Hall in Singapore on November 27, 2007, with over one thousand people attending, Mr R.S. Nathan, President of the Republic of Singapore, conferred the prestigious "President's Design Award 2007" to Mr Maurice Bourlion, now Professor at Jean Monnet University, Saint Etienne, France, for his invention named PediGuard™, an innovative surgical device for spinal surgery.

President R.S Nathan, in presence of Mr Lee Boon Yang, MD, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, specifically honoured the device for its contribution to the progress of spine surgery for the benefit of surgeons and patients worldwide.

The award recognizes a fruitful collaboration between several international teams of investors, researchers, designers and manufacturers, and Maurice Bourlion, co-inventor of the device concept and leader of the project for SpineVision over the past few years.

PediGuard™: an innovative concept for a complex surgery

Honoured in the "Product and Industrial Design" category, PediGuard™ seduced the international Jury as a unique product, a perfect marriage between an innovative surgical concept and high technology design.

Each year over one million people worldwide who suffer from spinal pathologies have to undergo surgery. These pathologies, whether degenerative, congenital or caused by a trauma or a tumour can be corrected in some cases by the implementation of surgical implants (rods and plates) that are most of the time fixed to the vertebrae by screws. But the right positioning of the screws remains a true challenge.

PediGuard™ was designed as a response to this challenge, to help the surgeon to secure the surgical gesture when drilling the pre-hole down the pedicle. The sensor at the tip of the drilling device is able to discriminate the type of biological tissue it comes in contact with. Thanks to its built-in electronics and software, the device produces an audio signal in real time all along the drilling process, indicating the type of tissue the tip is in contact with. When the instrument is about to get out of the vertebral pedicle area, the surgeon is immediately informed by a change of the audio signal. The surgeon can thus change the trajectory and avoid damage of surrounding biological tissues (nerves, artery, spinal cord). The device was received with tremendous interest by the medical community as soon as it was launched, and immediately adopted by the most renowned surgeons worldwide for use in routine.

The development of PediGuard™

Before he joined the Jean Monnet University in Saint Etienne, Maurice Bourlion was Executive Vice President for SpineVision and General Manager of the Group North American subsidiary based in San Francisco, CA.

SpineVision is an innovative company focused on the development and commercialization of implants and instruments for spine surgery. The company is headquartered in Paris, France, and has subsidiaries in Belgium, Italy, Singapore, UK and the USA.

Apart from the PediGuard™ project, Maurice Bourlion has collaborated to several key developments in the field of biomedical technology, such as the development and successful launch of lithotripsy systems for Technomed International, or the successful launch in Europe of electrical stimulators to treat urinary incontinence and of equipments to treat sleep pathologies for Medtronic.
He is the author of more than 40 scientific publications and is mentioned as inventor in 18 international patents.

The surgical gesture is indeed very delicate, as the surgeon must prepare the operation site by drilling a pre-hole in a narrow area of the vertebrae called the vertebral pedicle, surrounded by fragile physiological structures. Published rates of screw misplacement vary from 10 to 40 percent, with 2 to 10 percent of direct pathological consequences, that may be very serious, such as irreversible spinal cord injuries.