Orthopaedic surgery has advanced enormously over recent decades. New techniques, implants, imaging technologies, registries, training formats, and international specialist networks have improved care for millions of patients. Yet one central challenge remains: much of the world’s orthopaedic expertise is still captured only locally — in individual hospitals, expert teams, operative experience, conference discussions, registries, and case-based learning.
At the same time, orthopaedic care is becoming more complex. Surgeons are expected to make evidence-based decisions, document outcomes, support training, comply with evolving regulatory requirements, and evaluate implants and technologies across their full clinical life cycle. Artificial intelligence can help — but only if it is clinically grounded, ethically governed, transparently validated, and trusted by the surgical community.
The ERMOS Foundation — the European Research Foundation for Mobility and Orthopaedic Surgery / Erwin und Ruth Morscher-Stöcklin Stiftung — has been established in Davos/Switzerland to support this transition.
Inspired by the legacy of Erwin Morscher, a founding father of EFORT and a Trustee of the AO Foundation, ERMOS is conceived as an independent, public-benefit foundation advancing responsible orthopaedic AI, surgeon-governed clinical intelligence, evidence-based education, and outcome-oriented innovation in mobility care. Its role is not to replace existing orthopaedic institutions, registries, societies, or educational bodies, but to help connect and extend them into a new generation of trusted digital infrastructure.
The ERMOS Foundation is based in Davos, a place of special significance for the Morscher family: Ruth Morscher-Stöcklin spent the first twenty years of her life in Davos while her father served as medical director of the local «Thurgauer Schaffhauser Höhenklinik». It was also in Davos that Erwin Morscher worked alongside the AO Foundation — co-founding the TK Spine initiative, among other things — while collaborating with dear friends and colleagues. It was this spirit of friendship and collaboration that ultimately inspired him to go on and co-found EFORT with Wolfhart Puhl, Michael Freeman, and others.
Why ERMOS?
The future of orthopaedic AI cannot be built on technology alone. It requires clinical legitimacy, professional governance, transparent validation, and a clear separation between public-benefit stewardship and commercial deployment.
ERMOS provides this trust layer.
As a neutral foundation, ERMOS is designed to support the responsible development and validation of orthopaedic intelligence systems — including case-based knowledge workflows, AI-assisted classification, surgical documentation, outcome tracking, post-market clinical follow-up, and continuous medical education.
Its mission is to ensure that digital and AI-enabled orthopaedic tools remain aligned with the values of the profession: patient benefit, clinical quality, transparency, education, scientific evidence, and surgeon responsibility.
A Public-Benefit Steward for Orthopaedic Intelligence
ERMOS acts as a public-benefit steward for the emerging orthopaedic intelligence ecosystem. This includes supporting:
Clinical trust
AI in orthopaedics must be explainable, auditable, and subject to expert review. ERMOS promotes surgeon-governed workflows in which AI supports — but does not replace — clinical judgment.
Evidence-based validation
Orthopaedic AI systems must be validated against real clinical cases, outcomes, registries, and expert standards. ERMOS supports structured validation pathways for diagnostic, educational, documentation, and outcome-related AI use cases.
Global knowledge exchange
Orthopaedic expertise should not remain limited to a few leading centers. ERMOS promotes structured, case-based knowledge exchange across institutions, countries, and levels of care — from university hospitals to regional and rural clinics.
Education and training
The next generation of surgeons will need to learn not only from textbooks and courses, but from structured real-world cases, operative workflows, complications, outcomes, and expert reasoning. ERMOS supports responsible AI-enabled learning environments for students, residents, fellows, and practicing surgeons.
Responsible data governance
Clinical data must be handled with respect for privacy, patient rights, institutional responsibility, and professional ethics. ERMOS supports governance models in which surgeons, hospitals, and patients can trust how clinical data and derived intelligence are used.
ERMOS, ORTHO-X, and the Clinical Data & Code Commons
ORTHO-X is being developed as a surgeon-governed orthopaedic intelligence platform that turns real-world cases into structured, searchable, outcome-linked knowledge. It connects clinical documentation, classification, decision support, education, surgical workflow analysis, and post-market evidence generation.
ERMOS provides the public-benefit framework around this ecosystem.
A central concept is the creation of a Clinical Data & Code Commons: a trusted environment in which clinical logic, classification standards, validation methods, workflow templates, and selected open-source components can be developed, reviewed, improved, and shared for the benefit of the orthopaedic community.
This does not mean that every clinical dataset, algorithm, or commercial service is open. Rather, it means that the foundational principles, standards, validation logic, governance mechanisms, and educational building blocks should be transparent, clinically reviewable, and aligned with the public interest.
In this model, ERMOS helps ensure that orthopaedic AI evolves as a responsible professional infrastructure — not merely as a collection of proprietary tools.
Supporting Collaboration with Leading Orthopaedic Institutions
ERMOS has been positioned as a public-benefit partner in strategic collaboration discussions with leading orthopaedic organisations, including the AO Foundation and EFORT/EFORT Foundation.
These collaborations are intended to support shared priorities such as:
- surgeon-governed clinical intelligence;
- structured case-based learning;
- AI-assisted orthopaedic classification and documentation;
- registry-linked and outcome-based evaluation;
- post-market clinical follow-up for implants and medical technologies;
- responsible validation of AI systems across the orthopaedic care pathway;
- international education and knowledge exchange.
Through this role, ERMOS can help bridge the world of professional orthopaedic societies, academic research, clinical registries, hospitals, technology partners, and responsible commercial implementation.
Separating Stewardship from Commercialization
Responsible orthopaedic AI requires both public-benefit governance and professional execution.
ERMOS provides the stewardship layer: mission, ethics, standards, validation principles, education, and community governance.
MAIVAN.ai PBC by Bluenaut Matching Services AG provides the commercial and technical execution layer: product development, secure deployments, hospital integration, regulatory implementation, enterprise services, and international scaling.
This separation is intentional.
ERMOS helps protect clinical integrity and professional trust. MAIVAN.ai PBC helps translate validated concepts into usable, secure, and scalable solutions for hospitals, surgeons, medical technology companies, insurers, and health systems.
In this way, commercial success can support public-benefit infrastructure, while public-benefit governance helps ensure that commercial deployment remains clinically responsible.
The ERMOS–MAIVAN Value Cycle
The ERMOS–MAIVAN model is designed as a sustainable value cycle:
ERMOS supports standards, validation, education, and trusted governance.
MAIVAN.ai develops and deploys practical orthopaedic intelligence solutions such as ORTHO-X™, OrthoFlow™, OrthoSkills™, OSSOcare™, and the SurgiCorder® Intelligence Suite.
Hospitals, surgeons, registries, societies, and industry partners contribute real-world needs, clinical expertise, and validation pathways.
The resulting intelligence improves care, education, evidence generation, and post-market evaluation.
Part of the value created can then be reinvested into the public-benefit mission of ERMOS.
This creates a structure in which innovation, clinical trust, and economic sustainability reinforce each other.
Responsible Orthopaedic AI for Better Mobility Care
The role of ERMOS is to ensure that orthopaedic AI develops in service of patients, surgeons, and society.
The goal is not simply to automate tasks. The goal is to make the collective intelligence of orthopaedic care more structured, accessible, validated, and useful — especially at the moments when surgeons need support: during diagnosis, planning, surgery, documentation, complication management, training, follow-up, and outcome evaluation.
ERMOS stands for a future in which orthopaedic AI is:
- surgeon-governed
- patient-centered
- evidence-based
- privacy-preserving
- educationally useful
- clinically validated
- and globally collaborative.
That is why ERMOS is being established as the steward of responsible orthopaedic AI.
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