The engineer/medico racing to deliver a multi-limbed assistant to surgeons

This week in our Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers series, we hear from Dr Chris Jeffery, CEO of Convergence Medical Robotics. The third-time founder shares some lessons learned from running successful companies; how to build the right culture, especially at the early stage; and how you can move fast while doing difficult things. By Brent Balinski.

Founding and leading a successful surgical products company for seven years – designing, developing and launching over 2,000 products along the way – and then leaving to start something new could be described in a lot of ways.

For Dr Chris Jeffery, the engineer turned medical doctor turned serial entrepreneur who leads Convergence Medical, his sabbatical was “Probably the most fortunate experience in my life” following a career following “the bright, shiny ball” and jumping between exhausting projects.  

After considering options such as executive roles, returning to the clinical world and research, he signed up for another startup. He founded Convergence in 2022, a company moving briskly towards commercialisation of what it says is the world’s first arthroscopic robot.

“I think I’m a bad employee,” he offers as an explanation.

The company announced a $US 5 million Series A raise in January. Its fourth fundraising activity values Convergence at more than $30 million.

Do you think you belong on @AuManufacturing’s list of Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers? Apply to be recognised in this exclusive group here. It’s completely free to enter, and we’ll be celebrating the announcement of the 50 Most Innovative list and the award winners at a special breakfast event on May 7 at Crown Melbourne, during Australian Manufacturing Week.

And why did the Convergence CEO – whose numerous awards include being judged one of Australia Most Innovative Engineers – decide on building robots for keyhole surgery on joints and bones?

His explanation is best appreciated in full through the podcast below, but part of it includes this: “The most important thing when starting a company is not to have a solution and then try to squeeze it into a box where a problem might exist. 

“The best way is to find a way to naturally connect or be exposed to a true problem, where you can understand and relate to the people who are suffering, and then work through why it exists, how it exists, what the impacts are, and try to take the least burdensome approach to making it go away.” 

It didn’t have to be a robotics company, but that’s where the problem took him.

As a technical founder, he has seen the risks attached to developing solutions that are “unnecessarily innovative” or technical, leading to higher manufacturing costs and excess complexity. 

After deciding on a business to do with his passion of orthopaedics, he went with the sub-field of arthroscopy rather than the other two options of arthroplasty (repairing the surface of a joint) or trauma.

Arthroscopy took off in the 1950s, and hadn’t seen much innovation recently, believes Jeffery.

Surgeons remain saddled with a host of problems, he explains, with between eight and 12 operations a day, issues of distraction due to cognitive and physical demands, and equipment breaking in one out of ten operations. 

And with more than 50 million patients per year worldwide, it’s a meaningful number of meaningful surgeries that could be made better.

Convergence says its solution, the VO1 robot, aims to handle up to five instruments at once “with sub-millimeter precision and sub-degree accuracy”, and house a week’s worth of sterile, single-use surgical instruments, among other features.

The robot was accepted into the US FDA’s Breakthrough Program in late-2023. 2024’s schedule includes delivery of generation three of the VO1 for simulated rotator surgery demo by US surgeons, followed by generation four in November – “our clinical robot” – and FDA clearance “either late this year or early next”.

So what makes an innovative company, according to this founder?

First of all, Jeffery doesn’t think every company has to be innovative – at least not when it comes to products – though competence, domain expertise and a model that works are always important.

Secondly, innovation manifests after problem owners are gathered, aligned and consolidated to give a voice to the issues they face every day, and with conviction in what you’re doing. You also need people with the technical expertise to create a solution given the structure and resources to do their job well.

“I think what makes a company innovative is realistically when they understand their purpose, they have a focus, and that solution of what they do lends itself to needing innovation,” he tells @AuManufacturing

“And then the company, through brand or relationships, can connect those product owners and build the team within the organisation which has the appropriate expertise to make those solutions a reality. So anyway: structure, process and reason, I guess, is probably the short answer.”

In this episode of @AuManufacturing Conversations, Jeffery expands on all of the above; runs through an unusual career going from the Army to medicine, then switching to entrepreneurship via a beep test at an ENT clinic at Ipswich; speaks on the critical importance of proper planning; and more.

Editor’s note: an earlier version of this article did not clearly describe the valuation of Convergence as more than $30 million. This has been corrected.

Episode guide

1:20 – What Convergence does.

2:09 – career path, beginning with electronic and computer engineering degree (inspired by Iron Man) and a rugby league scholarship. Transitioned to a military scholarship and graduated 2007.

3:10 – RAEME Corp. Deployment in 2008 and 2009 in Iraq and Afghanistan as an adjutant.

4:30 – Falling in love with medicine and starting study for the GAMSAT while overseas.

5:30 – Returning to study through a medical leadership program.

7:10 – A formative chapter while on rotation at an ENT surgery at Ipswich. How a simple “beep test” led Jeffery to start his first technology business, Audera.

9:40 – Why the time was right for a business to do with headphones.

10:57 – The circumstances and reasons behind starting a second company, Field Orthopaedics, which Jeffery led for seven years.

12:10 – Field’s acquisition and a chance to step back and decide on something new. 

13:10 – A sabbatical and a chance to stop chasing a bright, shiny ball for a little while. Possible next steps included research, starting an executive role at a new company, or doing another startup.

15:08 – A fascination with problems and how it relates to starting Convergence. And what’s the problem?

16:30 – The three main markets within orthopaedic surgery that were considered, and why arthroscopy was the one.

18:16 – Developing a robot and what influenced how it was designed. What the surgeons’ problems are in all of this, “the world’s first arthroscopic surgical robot”.

19:30 – The moving parts of the VO1 robot.

21:35 – Supply chain issues and the reason for a high level of vertical integration. “Starting at motor level and building up” has helped keep costs down.

23:28 – The $US 5 million funding round this year, how it supports the company’s “go to market” plan, and what that involves.

24:15 – Third-generation robot scheduled for delivery in late-April for a simulated clinical demonstration. Feedback to be used for final design change for generation four, a clinical robot, with planned release in November. Closing out a technical file and expected FDA clearance will follow that.

27:10 – How to move fast and with purpose in this kind of company (or others.) Planning, buy-in, conviction, processes, and creating the right culture are all part of it. 

29:34 – So what makes up the right culture, and how do you try and select the right people to contribute to this? Some principles guiding recruitment.

32:10 – How to respond to inauthentic or incomplete responses from potential team members.

33:30 – Not every company needs to demonstrate product innovation, but competence and expertise are. “Innovation is only needed [by] a lesser section of all companies. But they’re the companies I love to run.”

34:01 – How do you create the conditions that can produce innovation? What are the ingredients?

34:46 – What makes a company innovative: structure, process, reason.

35:34 – Wanting to hold back as late as possible before deciding on a solution. 

35:50 – Risk and reward as it applies to Jeffery’s work.

37:38 – The world is changing incredibly quickly and it’s sort of impossible to keep up with it. Plus a few examples of where production has changed recently.

Picture: credit Convergence Medical