JointSpace · A nonprofit organization
Your health information belongs to you — not to the hospital that generated it, the insurer that paid for it, or the system that stored it. JointSpace exists to give you complete, private, portable ownership of your lifetime medical record.
What we do →Where this began
Bob Bishop's sister Mary was born with congenitally dislocated hips — walking with a condition that went undiagnosed in an era before newborn screening existed. In 1959, Dr. Carl Stolberg reconstructed her hips at Foote Hospital in Jackson. After the final pin came out, her mother cornered the surgeon in the hallway and asked every question she had. The surgeon answered one that changed everything.
Thirty years later, when Mary needed total hip replacements, her brother Bob was her orthopedic distributor. He enrolled her in the first cohort of hydroxyapatite-coated hip stems in North America — a technology Dr. James D'Antonio had just pioneered at Heritage Valley Sewickley Hospital. Mary bore three children. She lives an active life six decades after that waiting room conversation.
What made the difference was not just the surgery. It was continuity of knowledge — a mother who asked the right questions, a doctor who gave a real answer, a family member who remembered it thirty years later and acted on it. JointSpace is the infrastructure that conversation deserved.
The concept
A ball-and-socket joint is not two parts. It is three. The ball. The socket. And the space between them — the synovial fluid, the gap, the Third Part that makes motion possible without seizure. Perfect contact is a disaster: if ball meets socket with zero clearance, they fuse. To have a relationship, there must be a gap. The quality of the relationship is defined by the quality of the space between.
This is not a metaphor. It is a structural fact that holds at every scale — in orthopedic joints, in surgical teams, in the relationship between a patient and their lifelong health record.
Moving through a lifetime of medical encounters. Each procedure, each implant, each diagnosis leaves a mark.
The private, portable, lifetime record that keeps the relationship fluid — between the patient and every provider they will ever need.
Hospitals, surgeons, devices, insurers. The system that needs to know what it is working with to work well.
What we do
Most patients with complex surgical histories — joint replacements, cardiac interventions, spinal reconstructions — cannot produce a complete record of what was done to them, by whom, using what device, to what outcome. That record exists in fragments across systems that do not talk to each other, owned by institutions that are not you.
JointSpace is building the platform that changes this.
Every procedure. Every implant — manufacturer, model, lot number, revision history. Every diagnostic image. In one private, portable repository that belongs to you and follows you for life.
End-to-end encrypted architecture. You control access — who sees what, when. Not the hospital. Not the insurer. Not us. The system is designed so that a centralized controller is not necessary.
When you face a revision surgery, a second opinion, or a new provider across the country, you arrive with your complete history. You ask better questions. You get better answers. The gap stays lubricated.
Programs
We are building consumer knowledge-development programs for the medical specialties where lifetime implant and procedure records matter most. Orthopedic reconstruction is home territory — where JointSpace began. Expansion follows the same logic: wherever a patient's future care depends on knowing exactly what was done before.
Lower extremity. Upper extremity. Spine. Sports medicine. Patients who receive joint replacements at 50 may need revision surgery at 70 — with a different surgeon, in a different city, using different implant systems. The implant record, the operative notes, the imaging, the maintenance protocols: JointSpace makes this portable and private for the lifetime of the patient.
Preventive and surgical. Stents, valves, pacemakers, bypass histories — the same lifetime continuity problem applies.
Transplant recipients carry a complex medication and monitoring history that spans decades and multiple institutions.
Families deserve the same window into a child's surgical care that Bob's mother fought for in that Jackson waiting room in 1959.
Intraocular lens specifications and outcomes belong to the patient for the lifetime of the implant.
About
JointSpace is a Michigan nonprofit corporation. We are not a technology company extracting value from health data. We are a service organization building infrastructure for the people the healthcare system was designed to serve.
Bob Bishop spent four decades building tools for orthopedic surgery — distributorships, imaging systems, ambulatory surgery center operations. He co-founded Medstrat, which Zimmer Biomet acquired. He is the former distributor who enrolled his sister in the first cohort of hydroxyapatite-coated hip stems in North America. He created JointSpace because that moment — a family member with the right record at the right time — should not require luck.
On the record
Becker's Healthcare Ambulatory Surgery Centers podcast, June 2025. What JointSpace is, where it came from, and why surgical teams need it.
Chicago, June 2025. The origin of JointSpace, the Third Part concept, and why lifetime implant records change what surgical teams can do.
Listen on Apple Podcasts →The Third Part
doesn't belong
to the system.
It belongs to you. 🫵
JointSpace is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Employer Identification Number 86-2745133. Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Contact
Questions about the project, partnership inquiries, or requests for information about program participation — use the form below.