The AO Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the care of patients with musculoskeletal injuries or pathologies and their sequelae through research, development, and education of surgeons and operating room personnel. The AO Foundation is credited with revolutionizing operative fracture treatment and pioneering the development of bone implants and instruments.
The AO became a foundation in December At the time Dr. This approach focused on reducing fractures and stabilizing them with splints and plaster, followed by traction. He quickly developed his own ideas on how to improve the techniques he had seen from Danis. During his lecture he presented a set of orthopedic surgery principles that he developed, which would soon evolve to become the AO Principles of Fracture Management.
Successive meetings covered the AO's legal statutes and by-laws. The first AO efforts consisted of developing a standardized toolset that was easy to use and had a full tool-implant compatibility. The first version of the AO Instrumentarium consisted of a set of six color-coded aluminium cases, containing pre-sterilized screws, plates, and tools.
The AO team ordered 20 of these sets from Mathys, which would be first tested by the AO surgeons, and later used for the first AO course to be held in Davos in December The AO had decided that surgeons who wanted to purchase the AO Instrumentarium would first have to be trained in its proper use, as well as the latest surgical fracture techniques that the AO founding surgeons decided to teach.
The AO developed a business model that would provide funding for all AO research activities, the funding of an AO Documentation Center, and the AO educational activities, via licensing fees that the instrument producers would pay.
