 What makes for excellence in heart care? It starts with one of the most amazing teams of heart surgeons and cardiologists that I've seen assembled under one roof and the region's leading technology in a new $40 million facility. This is the nationally recognized Heart and Vascular Institute of Eastern Kentucky at Pikeville Medical Center. Recently PMC orthopedic surgeon Dr. Kevin Pugh successfully installed the first ever smart knee implant in Eastern Kentucky. This implant from Persona IQ can remotely track patient metrics such as range of motion, walking speed and number of steps taken. Mountain Top News spoke with Pugh to learn more. For knee replacements we can do a traditional knee replacement where we kind of glue the knee in place. We can do a press fit knee replacement where we allow the bone to grow to the implant. And then if we do a cemented traditional knee, the Persona IQ is an option for those patients. And all it is we add a little piece to the knee that allows them to transmit data to us to monitor the patient's outcome and how they're doing. But the patient has the option to say they want to do that or not. If they say, yeah, I think the technology is great, I want to be part of that. And if it's a glued in knee, then we will do the Persona IQ on those patients. Patients can also monitor their recovery progress via the My Mobility app. As for the implant itself, insurance does not affect one's ability to receive it. The recovery process are identical to that of a normal implant. It's hard to come to the doctor over and over and over again to be seen. So if we can decrease the amount of time that they have to come and see us by monitoring their outcomes at home, patients like that are much better. They hate to drive an hour and a half or two or three hours, wait on the doctor, and we see them for a few minutes and you're doing great. They've got to drive back home. We can see they're doing great by monitoring their data on our computer at work. Insurance is not an issue for the smart knee. If a patient wants it, they can have it as long as their knee meets certain criteria. In general, most patients that they say, I want that person on a smart knee, then they can have it. It's not a big deal. This is what it is. Take away this bottom part, that's a regular knee replacement implant. So all we do is add a small extension and this little gray part is what hooks up to the computer and it transmits all the data for us. If we didn't tell the patient, they would have no idea that it was in there. It makes no difference at all as far as how it feels, how it hurts, none at all. They would have no idea that it was even there. Reporting from Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Colum.