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From Low Tech to High, Vision Links Companies

The Oklahoman
April 14, 2008

When he was 13 years old, Doug McCormack lost his left leg to bone cancer. He was fitted with a low-tech wooden prosthetic leg that allowed very little mobility.

Then in 1984 his parents saw a small story in the Pittsburgh Press about Teddy Kennedy Jr. traveling to Oklahoma City to have a high-tech prosthetic device fitted by a prosthetist named John Sabolich.

'My parents picked up the phone and called John Sabolich, and the next week we came out here," McCormack said. 'It was a situation where the technology was not very good at the time, but John had ideas and had a vision and had hope where the prior experience was very negative in terms of what the potential really was from a rehab perspective."

24 years of regular travel to city

Thus began a 24-year relationship between McCormack, Sabolich and Oklahoma City. He traveled to Oklahoma City regularly to be fitted with prosthetic technology that became more sophisticated over time.

Along the way, McCormack, 38, earned a degree at the University of Southern California and a law degree from American University in Washington. He worked for a large law firm in Washington representing clients in the medical technology and health care industries and nonprofit organizations such as the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Inspired by innovative entrepreneurs he worked with as an attorney, McCormack founded his own company - Orthocare Innovations - last year to develop and commercialize medical technology.

And that led him back to Oklahoma City and to Martin Bionics, a local research and development company involved in creating advanced prosthetics.

Martin Bionics founder Jay Martin, 32, also is a USC grad. Martin and McCormack met when Martin worked for Scott Sabolich Prosthetics and Research as a prosthetist before spinning off Martin Bionics in 2005.

Really a shared vision

Last month, the companies announced that Martin Bionics had been sold to Orthocare Innovations for an undisclosed amount. Jay Martin became director of Orthocare Innovation's Oklahoma City-based Advanced Systems Group and also has an ownership interest in Orthocare Innovations, McCormack said.

'I spent some time with Jay talking about our ideas and our vision and it really worked out that there was really a shared vision in terms of where we wanted to take our companies," McCormack said. 'So, it really made sense for us to join forces."

Martin was recognized as Oklahoma's Innovator of the Year by the Journal Record last month on the day the sale of his company to Orthocare Innovation's was announced. Far from losing any independence by the deal, Martin said he was 'gaining opportunity" for his work.

'We both have far reaching goals, and I think it makes sense to join forces and be successful together rather than each of us to try to make the fight independently," Martin said. 'We kind of help fill the gaps that they were missing and they help fill the gaps that we were missing, so there is just a lot of synergy."

Orthocare Innovations already has doubled the space to 3,000 square feet that its Oklahoma City unit occupies in the Presbyterian Health Foundation Research Park. Martin heads a division that employs 10 people.

Seattle company bought in October

The Oklahoma City acquisition follows another deal in October in which Orthocare Innovation's purchased the assets of Seattle-based Cyma Corp., another company heavily involved in medical technology research and development. Orthocare Innovation's employs seven people in Seattle and three at its Washington headquarters.

Cyma's researchers have successfully won National Institutes of Health Funding, and McCormack said it can happen at Orthocare Innovation's Oklahoma City works, as well.

'That is something that we are very excited about, turning these folks here in Oklahoma into (primary investigators) themselves that NIH will fund," McCormack said. ‘That is only going to be good for the city and the area to have more individuals get funded."

McCormack envisions Orthocare Innovation's researchers developing technologies that it will spin off into new businesses that will commercialize it.

Technology continues to produce prosthetic devices that are far more sophisticated than the wooden leg on which McCormack was forced to rely on as a teenager.

'Now the technology involves microprocessors and artificial intelligence and allows you to walk and to function in a way that you are really not thinking about it," McCormack said. 'Now it is a much more natural process."

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