Prosthetics venture draws on experience, specialization

After years of personal and professional experience in prosthetics, Matt Bulow has set out to redefine an industry. Matthew Williams/The City Paper

Not many know the ins and outs of the prosthetics business like Matt Bulow.

After losing a leg below the knee to cancer at the age of 14, the Cookeville native went on to two tracks of career success. In one, he won the 1988 U.S. National Amputee tennis championship and took home medals and world records from three appearances at the Paralympics. In the other, he became as a certified prosthetist, earning degrees from Northwestern University’s School of Medicine and amassing 10 years of industry experience in the Nashville area.

But when Bulow struck out to launch a business with lifelong friend and former technology executive David Dye, his experience told him the rapidly developing technology of artificial arms and legs required a laser focus.

Since opening in 2006, Bulow BioTech Prosthetics has focused only on fitting patients with prosthetics, an unusual move in an industry that usually couples the field with related areas such as orthotics, which focuses on musculoskeletal issues.

“Prosthetics now is too advanced of a field to be lumped in a multi-specialty group,” says Bulow, who acts as the company’s chief clinical officer. “That was fine 10 years ago, but there’s so much emerging technology now that we felt there was a need for a place where all we do is prosthetics.”

After opening its first and second offices in Cookeville and Clarksville, respectively, the firm opened a new 4,500-square-foot location in Nashville this summer. That location serves as an anchor for the firm’s growing business of personalized care and product research, which is winning over the doubters.

“Physicians typically are used to dealing with both orthotics and prosthetics providers,” says Dye, the company’s CEO. “In order to refer amputees anywhere, it’s generally assumed you provide both. That rule of thumb is waved for our business.”

Bulow Biotech specializes in fitting and building the pieces that connect limbs to an actual prosthesis chosen based on the patient’s needs. Those pieces are manufactured overseas and fitting can be troublesome, particularly when individuals have grown unused to physical movement.

The company primarily fits prosthetics manufactured by Iceland-based Ossur and Germany-based Otto Bock, connections that Bulow first made during his days on the U.S. Paralympic team. Because of its work with active patients, those manufacturers and others have shown interest in getting feedback on their products from the company. The firm already has one beta-testing partnership with a company Bulow declined to name.

In addition to Bulow, the Nashville office has two prosthetists who are able to spend time fitting patients with products.

“Prosthetics isn’t a perfect science… The body is a modular object and therefore it requires that personal side to adapt,” he said. “Half your job is to pay attention to the person in the chair and sense their needs. Do they need a shot of confidence? Do they need a push?”

Although the company would like to expand across the Southeast, the partners said they don’t feel pressure to grow rapidly. Growth will come as a result of running across like-minded prosthetists with a hands-on approach that fits the firm’s.

“We have no proverbial gun to our head that says we need to grow at X rate or we need to reach X number in a certain amount of time,” Dye says. “We’re certainly very interested in being profitable, but what we’re interested in is taking our time.”