text: In 2014, Southern Research and the University of Alabama at Birmingham formed the Alliance for Innovative Medical Technology (AIMTech) to develop new medical devices to improve healthcare.
  The creation of medical devices are across all five specializations: Cardiology, Orthopedics, Ophthalmology, Rehabilitation and Trauma. The goal is for the first group of AIMTech-created medical devices to hit the market by 2020. By comparison, it can take 10 years to create an FDA approved drug.
  In 2016, AIMTech was awarded a $500,000 U.S. Department of Commerce grant to expand medical device innovation and commercialization.