A pediatric medical device company has relocated from Silicon Valley to Salt Lake City. It’s called Fixes 4 Kids, and it recently launched its first device, designed to improve how elbow fractures are treated in children.
Once upon a time, a broken arm meant a bulky white cast covered in classmates signatures. But in the future, it will be a sleek, black customized orthosis.
The orthosis is not only meant to improve on the old cast, but it also fits into a device that surgeons can use to better set the bone and the pins that hold it in place. Kurt Vedder, CEO and co-founder of Fixes 4 Kids, says the hope is to reduce the chance of further injury or nerve damage, and avoid errors that can lead to deformities. Broken elbows are the most common fractures in kids ages 3 to 12.
“We’re the first in the world to take this problem of the child and want to improve it with medical technology,” Vedder says.
The company was started in 2009 in the Silicon Valley. Vedder says they chose to move their headquarters to Salt Lake City for several reasons.
“Utah’s got a great entrepreneurial start-up mentality,” Vedder says. “It works well for small companies.”
Vedder says it’s twice as expensive to run the company from California as it is in Utah. The Salt Lake City operation includes a team of design engineers, and a marketing and finance group. Most of the manufacturing is in North Dakota. Since the relocation, Fixes 4 Kids has received funds from local Angel Groups as well as a grant from the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development.
