Charlottesville tech startup Icarus Medical Innovations is using a $600,000 grant from Virginia Catalyst to help advance research into the effectiveness of its flagship product.
Dave Johnson founded Icarus Medical in 2019 after years of working on designs for a knee brace for his own use. The startup launched its flagship product, The Ascender, in late 2020. The knee brace is designed to be a light-weight, external muscle tendon system that takes up to 40 pounds of body weight off the knee, allowing for greater mobility and significantly reducing pain.
Icarus takes 3D scans of a person’s knee, making the brace fully custom to each individual. The brace is then made using a combination of design automation and rapid 3D-printing. Johnson said the Icarus team is working with researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and The University of Virginia on the design automation piece to help scale the manufacturing process.
“The grant is meant to facilitate research among biotech companies…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
