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The latest edition of our ORTHOPAEDIC INDUSTRY ANNUAL REPORT® is available now! It surveys the orthopedic market over the course of 222 pages and 111 exhibits from our proprietary revenue models.
Below are some of the report’s highlighted takeaways, including the health of end markets, how technology is driving consolidation, the dynamics at play in the trauma market and the tantalizing promise of orthobiologics.
Healthy Volumes, Remaining Upside
The orthopedic market remained healthy in 2025, with robust demand for procedures and capital equipment.
The global population aged 65 and older is increasing rapidly and staying active for longer. Additionally, patients are entering the orthopedic care funnel at younger ages than in the past, and companies are capturing patients with new products that expand the continuum of care.
“Procedure volumes are very healthy, which affects our implants as well as our small capital,” said Stryker CEO Kevin Lobo. “The capital markets are really strong. Hospital balance sheets are strong. There were a lot of Mako cash purchases, when a year ago, those were being leased.”
Mako indicators are relatively promising compared to the last few years. The global financial markets avoided a recession and stuck a soft landing. Inflation peaked in 2022 at 9%, but has since moderated to 3% in 2025 and is expected to remain low in 2026. Unemployment rates are stable. Broad equity markets are trading at near all-time highs. Healthcare stocks remain under pressure, but are likely to improve.
Given these factors, we expect the market’s growth rate to moderate in the coming years, but remain elevated compared to pre-2020 averages as the market surpasses $78 billion by 2029.
Technology Driving Consolidation
It comes as no surprise that digital assets are increasingly in demand for orthopedic M&A and funding. Digital assets comprised 13% of orthopedic M&A between 2016 and 2020. Since 2021, the percentage has increased to 18%. Along with orthobiologics, digital was the only M&A category to accelerate since 2021.
This trend is even more pronounced in the funding space, where the digital category has grown nearly 9% since 2021, jumping from 15% of funding announcements to 23%.
A driving force for these trends is the relatively new strategy of the top players creating expansive tech portfolios to appeal to the widest possible array of unconverted surgeons.
According to Zimmer Biomet, 80% of U.S. surgeons don’t use robotics. Internationally, the number is closer to 90%. If those surgeons haven’t adopted large footprint robots by now, there’s a chance they may never do so.
That’s why Zimmer Biomet believes the pathway to robotics leadership is through optionality and has led the charge among top players in creating diverse tech ecosystems.
Medtronic, for example, has demonstrated that strategic success with enabling technology is best served by having a complete, differentiated ecosystem. Key accounts are increasingly upgrading not just one piece of technology, but are instead adopting the entire Medtronic ecosystem.
That level of investment by hospitals makes Medtronic very sticky in those accounts and creates a defensive moat around crucial implant market share.
Core Trauma Offsets Foot and Ankle
The trauma market reached $9.6 billion in worldwide sales in 2025, growing 5.8% compared to the prior year. For the second consecutive year core trauma exceeded expectations, while procedure volume softness impacted the foot and ankle segment.
While foot and ankle enjoys a high-single-digit growth rate, surgical volumes have traditionally been choppy. The number of procedures slowed in late 2023 and remained inconsistent throughout much of 2024.
Most of the top companies in trauma said 2025 was slow, as well. How much longer could the soft market last? There were signs of life in the second half of 2025 and Stryker, for one, thinks 2026 will bring a better market environment.
During this downturn, however, core trauma has experienced a resurgence driven by patient demographics and a wave of innovation entering the segment. That innovation is not only coming from traditional plating systems like Pangea and VOLT but also digital solutions.
We expect more trauma-focused enabling technologies to hit the market in the coming years. Eric Tamweber, Stryker’s Vice President and General Manager of Trauma, identified enabling technology as the biggest growth opportunity in core trauma. DePuy Synthes teased its VELYS Trauma AI-Assisted Surgery system at AAOS in early 2026.
The Promise of Orthobiologics
Surgeons we’ve spoken with have identified biologics as the future and next wave of innovation in spine surgery, saying the combination of implants and orthobiologics could reduce the need for revision surgery. It is becoming increasingly clear that the intersection of technology, implants and biologics is where the greatest strides can be made in improving surgical outcomes.
Likewise, knee osteoarthritis is a major societal health and economic burden requiring new treatment solutions. Joint osteoarthritis (OA) affects 32.5 million adults in the United States with an overall economic burden of $137 billion annually, according to estimates by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The economic burden has more than doubled over the last decade.
While the outlook for this area is promising, the industry has seen multiple products fail to achieve statistically significant results capable of supporting FDA approval through the PMA or Biologics License Application pathways, and those companies went bankrupt or restructured to prioritize other targets.
Orthobiologics products lack long-term clinical data, as well as inconsistent formulation and dosing standards. In response, surgeon associations are establishing registries and expanding educational initiatives to better differentiate products and guide clinical use.
The latest edition of our ORTHOPAEDIC INDUSTRY ANNUAL REPORT® is available now! It surveys the orthopedic market over the course of 222 pages and 111 exhibits from our proprietary revenue models.
Below are some of the report’s highlighted takeaways, including the health of end markets, how technology is driving consolidation,...
The latest edition of our ORTHOPAEDIC INDUSTRY ANNUAL REPORT® is available now! It surveys the orthopedic market over the course of 222 pages and 111 exhibits from our proprietary revenue models.
Below are some of the report’s highlighted takeaways, including the health of end markets, how technology is driving consolidation, the dynamics at play in the trauma market and the tantalizing promise of orthobiologics.
Healthy Volumes, Remaining Upside
The orthopedic market remained healthy in 2025, with robust demand for procedures and capital equipment.
The global population aged 65 and older is increasing rapidly and staying active for longer. Additionally, patients are entering the orthopedic care funnel at younger ages than in the past, and companies are capturing patients with new products that expand the continuum of care.
“Procedure volumes are very healthy, which affects our implants as well as our small capital,” said Stryker CEO Kevin Lobo. “The capital markets are really strong. Hospital balance sheets are strong. There were a lot of Mako cash purchases, when a year ago, those were being leased.”
Mako indicators are relatively promising compared to the last few years. The global financial markets avoided a recession and stuck a soft landing. Inflation peaked in 2022 at 9%, but has since moderated to 3% in 2025 and is expected to remain low in 2026. Unemployment rates are stable. Broad equity markets are trading at near all-time highs. Healthcare stocks remain under pressure, but are likely to improve.
Given these factors, we expect the market’s growth rate to moderate in the coming years, but remain elevated compared to pre-2020 averages as the market surpasses $78 billion by 2029.
Technology Driving Consolidation
It comes as no surprise that digital assets are increasingly in demand for orthopedic M&A and funding. Digital assets comprised 13% of orthopedic M&A between 2016 and 2020. Since 2021, the percentage has increased to 18%. Along with orthobiologics, digital was the only M&A category to accelerate since 2021.
This trend is even more pronounced in the funding space, where the digital category has grown nearly 9% since 2021, jumping from 15% of funding announcements to 23%.
A driving force for these trends is the relatively new strategy of the top players creating expansive tech portfolios to appeal to the widest possible array of unconverted surgeons.
According to Zimmer Biomet, 80% of U.S. surgeons don’t use robotics. Internationally, the number is closer to 90%. If those surgeons haven’t adopted large footprint robots by now, there’s a chance they may never do so.
That’s why Zimmer Biomet believes the pathway to robotics leadership is through optionality and has led the charge among top players in creating diverse tech ecosystems.
Medtronic, for example, has demonstrated that strategic success with enabling technology is best served by having a complete, differentiated ecosystem. Key accounts are increasingly upgrading not just one piece of technology, but are instead adopting the entire Medtronic ecosystem.
That level of investment by hospitals makes Medtronic very sticky in those accounts and creates a defensive moat around crucial implant market share.
Core Trauma Offsets Foot and Ankle
The trauma market reached $9.6 billion in worldwide sales in 2025, growing 5.8% compared to the prior year. For the second consecutive year core trauma exceeded expectations, while procedure volume softness impacted the foot and ankle segment.
While foot and ankle enjoys a high-single-digit growth rate, surgical volumes have traditionally been choppy. The number of procedures slowed in late 2023 and remained inconsistent throughout much of 2024.
Most of the top companies in trauma said 2025 was slow, as well. How much longer could the soft market last? There were signs of life in the second half of 2025 and Stryker, for one, thinks 2026 will bring a better market environment.
During this downturn, however, core trauma has experienced a resurgence driven by patient demographics and a wave of innovation entering the segment. That innovation is not only coming from traditional plating systems like Pangea and VOLT but also digital solutions.
We expect more trauma-focused enabling technologies to hit the market in the coming years. Eric Tamweber, Stryker’s Vice President and General Manager of Trauma, identified enabling technology as the biggest growth opportunity in core trauma. DePuy Synthes teased its VELYS Trauma AI-Assisted Surgery system at AAOS in early 2026.
The Promise of Orthobiologics
Surgeons we’ve spoken with have identified biologics as the future and next wave of innovation in spine surgery, saying the combination of implants and orthobiologics could reduce the need for revision surgery. It is becoming increasingly clear that the intersection of technology, implants and biologics is where the greatest strides can be made in improving surgical outcomes.
Likewise, knee osteoarthritis is a major societal health and economic burden requiring new treatment solutions. Joint osteoarthritis (OA) affects 32.5 million adults in the United States with an overall economic burden of $137 billion annually, according to estimates by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The economic burden has more than doubled over the last decade.
While the outlook for this area is promising, the industry has seen multiple products fail to achieve statistically significant results capable of supporting FDA approval through the PMA or Biologics License Application pathways, and those companies went bankrupt or restructured to prioritize other targets.
Orthobiologics products lack long-term clinical data, as well as inconsistent formulation and dosing standards. In response, surgeon associations are establishing registries and expanding educational initiatives to better differentiate products and guide clinical use.
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Mike Evers is a Senior Market Analyst and writer with over 15 years of experience in the medical industry, spanning cardiac rhythm management, ER coding and billing, and orthopedics. He joined ORTHOWORLD in 2018, where he provides market analysis and editorial coverage.
