History

The company can trace its beginnings back to the time when it was part of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, whose main research laboratories were based at the Harwell site south of Oxford. This prestigious and historic site has remained as the home of the company until the present day.  It first became involved in the field of orthopaedics in the 1970s when many orthopaedic manufacturers were searching for processes to improve the strength, wear resistance and biocompatibility of the metallic alloys used in their implants.

Many coating techniques such as thermal plasma spray, ion implantation, and titanium nitride surface enhancement had been discovered and developed at Harwell as part of the research into nuclear reactor design.These techniques were adopted by many orthopaedic companies, for example plasma spray metallic and hydroxyapatite coatings are now globally used in cementless prostheses.

There was also considerable expertise available at Harwell in other areas relevant to orthopaedic science. These included failure mode analysis, fatigue testing of metallic artifacts and corrosion studies. As a result the Harwell site rapidly became the leading UK centre for the regulatory testing of joint replacement products and was also involved in the initial drafting of various British and ISO standards covering the testing of orthopaedic devices and the specification of medical grade alloys.

Today Accentus Medical has become the UK's largest  independent supplier of plasma spray coating services to orthopaedic manufacturers around the world and continues to conduct regulatory testing and other analytical studies for many major orthopaedic implant manufacturers.

In addition, Accentus has its own well established research and development group which is involved in the development of intellectual property in the orthopaedic area. Currently these interests include porous in-growth surfaces, and the use of silver as a bactericidal surface modification on implant metals. The latter is currently undergoing clinical evaluation in the field of custom made tumour replacement prostheses.