Patent ID: 8635082

Claim:
A method for managing inventories of orthopaedic implants, the method comprising: receiving, by a computing system and over a network, an electronic authorization from a healthcare provider network, the electronic authorization including (i) authorization to retrieve medical images and metadata associated with the medical images from the healthcare provider network and (ii) a location within the healthcare provider network from which the medical images and the metadata can be retrieved; retrieving, from the location within the healthcare provider network and in response to receiving the electronic authorization, (i) a medical image of a patient's bone and (ii) surgeon preference data, selected by a healthcare provider that identifies a desired characteristic of orthopaedic implants, over the network by the computing system; selecting, by the computing system, an orthopaedic implant from an inventory of orthopaedic implants, the inventory of orthopaedic implants comprises a plurality of orthopaedic implants available for selection, and wherein the orthopaedic implant is selected based on the medical image such that the selected orthopaedic implant satisfies the surgeon preference data; retrieving, by the computing system, a stored digital template of the selected orthopaedic implant from a data repository, the data repository comprises a plurality of digital templates; determining, by the computing system, an axis of the patient's bone from the medical image; performing, by the computing system, a digital templating procedure on the medical image to automatically superimpose the digital template of the selected orthopaedic implant onto the medical image in a location and orientation that is automatically selected as a function of the determined axis of the patient's bone and an amount of bone to be resected from the patient's bone during an orthopaedic surgical procedure to generate a digital templated image; transmitting, by a communication circuit of the computing system, the digital templated image generated from the digital templating procedure to the healthcare provider over the network using a communication protocol; receiving, by the computing system, an electronic approval from the healthcare provider in response to transmitting the digital templated image; and generating a shipping order by the computing system to ship the selected orthopaedic implant to the healthcare provider in response to receiving the electronic approval.