New Technology Evaluation Framework & Digital Collaboration Platform for AOC Departments and Orthopaedic MedTech Companies (2026)
Executive Summary
Academic orthopaedic departments have consistently expressed a desire for earlier access to emerging technologies, more direct pathways to industry-supported research, and greater ability to engage residents and fellows in meaningful innovation-related work, particularly as federal research funding becomes more constrained. At the same time, orthopaedic MedTech and pharmaceutical companies are actively seeking clearer, more efficient ways to collaborate with U.S. academic programs around technology evaluation, validation, and education.
Beginning in Q2 2026, AOC will operationalize a new, academic-led framework through the launch of a digital collaboration platform and the AOC Badge of Excellence™ for New Technology Evaluation. Together, these tools are designed to create a governed, bi-directional ecosystem in which participating departments gain earlier visibility into new technologies and therapies, increased access to industry-supported research opportunities, and the ability to proactively request collaborations aligned with their own clinical and research priorities.
For industry partners, the platform provides a transparent, scalable pathway to engage academic leaders and training programs around evaluation, validation, and education initiatives. For departments, it creates a new, structured mechanism to shape the innovation agenda, rather than simply respond to it, while preserving academic independence, institutional control, and non-promotional engagement.
On behalf of the AOC MedTech Advisory Council, we want to share an important directional update reflecting priorities identified by AOC Chairs. This work has been developed over the past two years through the Council and AOC Executive Committee, informed by presentations and facilitated discussions at the 2025 AOC Business & Leadership Symposium.
Across these forums, Chairs consistently raised the same challenge: while academic orthopaedics remains deeply committed to responsible innovation, the processes for evaluating and validating new technology vary widely across institutions. This variability often creates friction, inefficiency, and missed opportunities for both academic departments and industry partners—particularly when it comes to identifying, initiating, and executing research, education, and evaluation collaborations.
In parallel, Chairs and research leaders also noted increasing pressure on academic research enterprises to identify credible, non-federal collaboration opportunities as traditional funding pathways become more constrained.
In response to this feedback, AOC has been working collaboratively with academic and industry leaders to develop a structured, academic-led framework that establishes shared expectations, ethical guardrails, and readiness standards for the evaluation of new orthopaedic technology. A critical deliverable of this effort is the establishment of a new AOC digital platform, scheduled for launch in Q2 2026, designed to make this collaboration pipeline significantly easier, more transparent, and more efficient for both departments and participating industry partners, including orthopaedic MedTech and pharmaceutical companies.
Beginning in 2026, AOC will move forward with the AOC Badge of Excellence™ for New Technology Evaluation, supported by this digital platform. The platform will connect AOC departments meeting specific criteria with participating orthopaedic MedTech and pharmaceutical companies committed to the framework. This will enable a single, governed ecosystem where research, education, evaluation, and validation opportunities related to new technologies and therapies can be identified and pursued more efficiently.
A core capability of this digital platform will be bi-directional collaboration functionality. Participating MedTech and pharmaceutical companies will be able to post research, evaluation, validation, and education opportunities related to new technologies and therapies, while participating academic orthopaedic departments will likewise be able to signal interest, request collaboration, and propose research or evaluation needs of their own. These interactions will occur in real time within a single, governed AOC ecosystem and will be limited to departments and companies that have met criteria for participation under the Badge of Excellence framework.
To date, AOC has received commitments from four of the largest orthopaedic MedTech companies in the world to participate in this initiative. In parallel, AOC is actively engaging pharmaceutical companies with orthopaedic-relevant portfolios to participate under the same governed framework.
Participation in this framework is intended to provide meaningful and practical value to academic departments. Based on input submitted by participating MedTech companies through the AOC MedTech Advisory Council process, engagement under this model will be guided by a set of shared principles that industry and AOC leadership believe should be ideal for successful collaboration and include:
- Timely and responsive engagement during evaluation-related contracting processes, with the goal of aligning with academic medical center timelines
- Access to new or emerging technologies for early evaluation or validation at pricing intended to be net-neutral relative to existing technologies or procedures during defined evaluation periods
- Use of structured evaluation and validation processes, including defined objectives and post-adoption review when appropriate
- Engagement with designated company innovation and education leaders throughout the evaluation process, and potentially beyond
- Priority consideration for future new technology evaluations as technologies progress toward market availability
These principles reflect a shared commitment to improving how academic departments and industry partners work together within a governed, academic-led framework. While implementation may vary by company and technology, these principles represent a meaningful step toward greater consistency, transparency, and efficiency across the ecosystem.
We expect that this framework and digital platform will increase access to research and new technology evaluation opportunities for departments of all sizes, while also improving the efficiency with which those opportunities are identified, matched, and executed. Importantly, a considerable amount of work has already been completed to identify best-practice attributes that academic orthopaedic departments can adopt to help streamline and accelerate new technology evaluation and validation processes. AOC will freely share these best practices across the full membership, with the goal of helping every department—large and small—achieve readiness and qualify for participation if they choose to do so.
This work has been led in large part by the AOC MedTech Advisory Council, a joint academic–industry group that has been working over the past two years to identify barriers, define best practices, and propose practical improvements. You can learn more about the Council and its work by clicking the button below.
Insights from the AOC Business & Leadership Symposium
In addition, many of the challenges and best-practice attributes informing this framework were outlined in a presentation delivered at the AOC Business & Leadership Symposium. For those interested, that material can be found at the link below.
We are sharing this update broadly in advance of a secondary communication that will be coming directly via email from Joshua Jacobs, MD and Rafael Sierra, MD to AOC Chairs and to those individuals that Chairs have identified as lead surgeons for participation in AOC MedTech Advisory Council–related initiatives. Last year, AOC invited each department Chair to identify leaders within their department to help inform and shape this work, and 66 academic orthopaedic departments expressed interest in participating. We are grateful to those departments for their engagement and will be reaching back out to both Chairs and their identified leaders to begin establishing department profiles within the new digital platform. We hope all departments will choose to take advantage of these opportunities as this initiative moves forward.
This framework:
- Is institutional, not individual
- Is performance-based, not promotional
- Requires accountability from both academia and industry
- Explicitly prohibits sales-only or promotional activity
- Preserves academic independence, COI transparency, and procurement integrity
The intent is not to create a marketplace or endorsement program, but rather to provide a neutral, academic-led structure that reflects best practices already in place across many AOC institutions and brings the academic–industry ecosystem together in a more coordinated and efficient way.
We believe this direction directly reflects priorities expressed by AOC Chairs and aligns closely with AOC’s mission to support academic orthopaedics in education, research, innovation, and leadership.
Thank you for your continued engagement and leadership within the AOC.
Sincerely,
Joshua Jacobs, MD
Rafael Sierra, MD
Joshua J. Jacobs, MD
Chair-Emeritus, Midwest Rush
Rafael Sierra, MD
Chair, Division of Hip and Knee, Mayo Clinic