Milestones and Saphenability
It was a good opportunity to write about the milestones Saphenability has achieved and still has to achieve, when I came across an old milestone on the side of the road during a Sunday walk in Vienna. The idea came to co-founder Rainer Schultheis very early on in the company, actually even before the company was founded, as he had previously channeled his experience as a meteorologist and climate researcher into the company for two decades. But what do these topics of the future have to do with a medtech company? Well, more than you might think. If you look at the question: What can we do about the changing climate? It was only natural to focus on sustainability issues. And so when Saphenus was founded as a company in 2016, the idea was to put sustainability on the agenda from the very beginning. From an ecological, economic and social perspective. Admittedly, in the wilder times of the company’s development, the topic played a subordinate role, much like the pansy flower by the wayside of this milestone. However, with the establishment of development aid in the Tunisia region at the latest, it suddenly became a priority again. This gave rise to the idea of merging Saphenus – the word comes from Arabic and means ‘the hidden’ – with sustainability in one word. Saphenability was born.
Saphenability has achieved a lot in the minds of the founders. It has almost an overriding, sometimes vigilant function in the company when it comes to ethical principles and it radiates to the company’s employees, who have the feeling that they are working on something bigger here.
In this sense, Saphenability has reached many milestones, sometimes even skipped them, sometimes climbed them as if on an arduous mountain tour. Here are a few important ones.
Milestone: climate-neutral medical device. Together with sustainability experts, the production processes were optimized, the regionalization of the suppliers of the medical device was pushed forward and the company’s own footprint was scrutinized. In the end, it came down to the already hackneyed phrase of the win-win situation. A “made in Austria” product with the creation of jobs in our cultural region, control over the quality of the product from the buyer’s point of view but also from a regulatory point of view.
Milestone: being active in a new region with low purchasing power parity every 3 years and reducing the phantom pain. Saphenus is active in the major established markets: Germany, Austria, Italy and now also the USA. What is very unusual, however, is that Saphenus has already created numerous supplies in a country like Tunisia, where 90% of all amputees do not yet have a prosthesis and urgently need them for a minimum level of health literacy. Several batches and the urgent desire to achieve this milestone have created “second leg” within the framework of Saphenability. A wonderful project with wonderful people who have only one goal in mind: that people can stand with two legs on the ground again.
Now there is another region that has such a great need for prosthetic care, that Saphenus can only make a small contribution. The Ukraine. It may be a small contribution, but it should have a big impact and pave the way for simpler prostheses that fulfil the bionic principles of Saphenus and reduce phantom pain.
This brings us to the future milestone: there is an urgent need to contribute to increasing the penetration rate of prosthetic fittings. This is also an appeal to manufacturers to do something for the common good. A shout-out to the manufacturers‘ commercial departments: 70% untapped market, that’s too much! In the language of humanity, this means: 70% of the world’s amputees have no prosthesis! And cannot participate in life. That has to change. Saphenus with Saphenability will make a contribution. We promise.
