MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Click Medical
By DEBORAH CONN
All About Adjustability
Company offers prosthetic sockets, orthotic solutions, and casting options
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LICK MEDICAL OWES ITS
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AUGUST 2019 | O&P ALMANAC
Click Medical has designed devices that allow patients to adjust their prostheses “on the go.”
COMPANY: Click Medical OWNERS: Jimmy Capra and Joe Mahon, CP LOCATION: Steamboat Springs, Colorado HISTORY: Six years
Jimmy Capra
Joe Mahon, CP
education, and customer support. Its products include prosthetic and orthotic applications of Click’s adjustable technology, including kits for traditional and suspension prosthetic sockets, straps and buckles for a range of orthoses, and lacers for therapeutic and athletic shoes. “Our system allows amputees to make their own adjustments as often as they like, and through clothing,” explains Mahon. “Some patients adjust their sockets five to 10 times in a day; others might adjust them 20 to 30 times, depending on the changing volume of the residual limb and what they are doing.” Empowering device wearers to make their own adjustments benefits both patients and practitioners, Mahon says. Patients don’t have to make an appointment and wait to see a practitioner—by which time the fit issue may have changed. And clinicians save time and cut back on work that may be nonreimbursable. Click’s technology has been used with about 45,000 prosthetic
Joe Mahon, CP, works with a patient.
“We value innovation in how we deliver education as well as in our products,” Capra explains. “Clinicians and technicians can access educational courses through our online portal at any time, and we can provide them with kits to practice on while they watch.” Capra and Mahon are well aware of the importance of outcomes research in O&P, and their company is eight months into a study measuring outcomes among a wide range of patients, in addition to other studies on adjustability by practitioners and academics. Looking ahead, Capra wants to continue to improve and refine the company’s offerings. “We want our products to be easier to use and easier to fabricate. It should be a no-brainer that people will be using our sockets as a standard of care,” he says. “Changing lives and helping people: That’s our daily goal.” Deborah Conn is a contributing writer to O&P Almanac. Reach her at deborahconn@verizon.net.
PHOTOS: Click Medical
start to the proverbial “aha” moment, which transpired in 2009 when Joe Mahon, CP, a clinician at a Salt Lake City facility, noticed something. “I had a patient who needed the fit adjusted on her prosthetic socket. I was not in the office that day, but I met her there and made the adjustment,” recalls Mahon. “It struck me that if she could adjust the socket herself, it would save a lot of time for both of us. “Soon after that, I was skiing with my wife, and I noticed that as she got off the lift, she bent down to adjust the dial on her snowboarding boots. Aha! What if we could use that technology to adjust socket fit?” Mahon went home and dissected his wife’s boots. He experimented with the mechanism on a prosthetic socket and saw that it could be used to adjust the fit at any time. Over the next few years, Mahon refined the technology and in 2013 began using the device in his Salt Lake City facility. In 2015, Mahon joined forces with Jimmy Capra, former director of the medical business unit at Boa Technology, which produced the closing system incorporated into Mahon’s design. The two launched Click Medical, with Capra as chief executive officer and Mahon as chief clinical officer. Today, Click’s 2,600-squarefoot facility in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, houses all assembly, warehousing, and business activities. The company has 12 employees in several departments, including marketing, sales, operations, clinical and technical
patients since 2015, and about 20 percent of O&P clinics in the United States have tried the system. The company’s primary form of marketing is through education. “We educate patients who would like to manage their own care, and clinicians looking for a better solution to managing a rigid socket,” says Capra. Click leverages advertising, social media campaigns, industry meetings, and email blasts to existing customers, as well as sales efforts by its worldwide distributors.