ABOUT THE COMPANY
THE FOUNDER OF ATTRI ORTHOPAEDICS
George Vicatos was born in Athens, Greece in 1955, to a mother who was a medical doctor and to a father who was an officer in the Greek Royal Navy. He grew up in an environment where his mother’s laboratory and practice were at home, and he devoted many hours browsing his mother’s anatomy books and enjoyed her explanations and diagrams of the processes in the human body. As the years passed by, George not only became knowledgeable about the body structures, but also developed a passion for designing engineering devices and eventually studied mechanical engineering.
​He holds a BSc Degree in Electrical/Mechanical Engineering from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in UK (1977), a BSc Degree in Marine Engineering from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in UK (1978), an MSc Degree with distinction and a DIC Certificate in Aeronautics and Fluid Dynamics from the University of London/Imperial College in UK (1980)
In 1985 he was employed in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cape Town, RSA where he started his long academic career and from where he obtained his PhD Degree in Thermodynamics in 1995.
​During his engineering and academic career, his life-long interest in medicine, led him to study Anatomy and Physiology in 1997 at the Medical School of the University of Cape Town, RSA. He then used his engineering knowledge and design capability to focus his attention on the reconstruction of the human skeleton.
He had already started designing medical tools in 1992, such as an instrument to aid the reattachment of the greater trochanter in a novel way. Since then, George continued to produce several isolated medical devices and in 2000/01, he became fully involved in the development of orthopaedic implants and instruments.
ATTRI's SYMBOL
The Grecian night sky kindled Dr Vicatos’ interest in astronomy along with his passion for the human anatomy and engineering design. He studied the Odyssey by Homer at school and was fascinated by Homer’s description of the constellation Ursa Major that never sets below the horizon in mid-northern latitudes, as “being the sole constellation that never sinks below the horizon but only bathes in the Ocean's waves".
Ursa Major means Great Bear and the most famous star in the constellation is Megrez, derived from the Arabic word al-maghriz, meaning “the base”. This “base” is the base of the tail with 3 stars to the left being the tail and 3 stars to the right being the body. Subsequently Dr Vicatos found that the star Megrez, is called ATTRI in Hindu, and he chose this name as an acronym for his company because it so aptly describes what his company can provide, namely Advanced Tumour Trauma and Revision Implants; and the shape of the constellation of Ursa Major then became the foundation of its logo.
Finally, the artistic flair of the logo designer resulted in all the stars in the constellation being joined by lines that produce a triangulated pattern; and this is how the shape of a customized implant is designed from the immense number of data-points collected from an MRI or a CT scan of the patient’s skeletal tissue.
Hence the logo encompasses the scope and the design work of the company in its shape and meaning.