Hyebrid: titanium skull and facial implants free for soldiers who took part in the war

• 100%free for soldiers who took part in the war, as Hyebrid states on its website; the conditions are not published there
• 300+Hyebrid devices implanted in patients by early 2026, the first in 2021: the company's own figure (catalogue, pp. 1 and 7), for all patients, not only soldiers
• 54custom titanium plates and prostheses had been made for veterans as of 2023, according to a column in EVN Report

What Hyebrid makes and what is distinctive about its products

Hyebrid (the logo reads HYEBRID TECHNOLOGIES) is a laboratory in Yerevan. According to its catalogue, the company was founded in early 2021 (p. 1); its website and 2021 publications also use the earlier name Hybrid Laboratory. It was set up by Diaspora Armenians from France, Russia, Germany, the United States and Lebanon together with local partners, as the Public Radio of Armenia reported on 23 September 2021, citing the Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs; by then, it added, 11 soldiers had already had titanium prostheses implanted. The catalogue names Karen Karapetyan as founder and Artur Khachatryan as CEO; the devices are designed by General Biomedical Engineer Bagrat Baghdasaryan, and each design is reviewed and validated by the operating surgeon or, where appropriate, by a multidisciplinary clinical board (p. 1). The products are made on a metal 3D printer: a laser fuses metal powder layer by layer (selective laser melting, SLM). A surgeon implants them: according to EVN Report, Hyebrid delivers the finished items to hospitals. What the range includes, according to the 2026 catalogue (pp. 6–34):

• neurosurgery: a Simple Cranioplasty Implant to close cranial vault defects after trauma, decompressive craniotomy and other causes (p. 8); an Expanding Paediatric Cranioplasty System designed with skull growth in mind (p. 11); Craniosynostosis Surgical Guides for osteotomies when skull sutures fuse too early (p. 15); standard titanium plates for fixing bone fragments (p. 16);
• jaw: a Patient-specific Graft Mesh that holds a bone graft (p. 17); a Patient-specific Subperiosteal Implant for severe jaw atrophy when conventional dental implants cannot be placed (p. 18); a Segmental Jaw Replacement Functional Implant after resection or trauma (p. 19); a Segmental Jaw Replacement Autograft Set for rebuilding the jaw with the patient's own bone, such as a fibula flap (p. 20); a Patient-specific Mandibular Reconstruction Plate, the Megaplate (p. 21);
• joint: a patient-specific Total Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ) Replacement System (p. 22), the only joint in the catalogue;
• a Mandibular Paediatric Expanding System designed to adapt to growth; according to the catalogue, its installation is scheduled for 2026 (p. 24);
• face: a Patient-specific Orbital Reconstruction Implant and an Orbitozygomatic Complex Reconstruction Implant (pp. 27–28), a Volumetric Contour Augmentation Implant (p. 29), and an Orthognathic Surgery Set and a Genioplasty Set of guides and fixation components for jaw and chin surgery (pp. 30–32);
• standard products: a Standard Graft Mesh (0.3–0.6 mm) and Maxillofacial Osteosynthesis Standard Plates (pp. 33–34).

The key feature is that, apart from the standard plates and meshes, devices are not picked from stock sizes: each is designed for a single person from their CT and 3D scan data, so that it matches the anatomy precisely (catalogue, p. 1). Patient-specific implants are printed from the titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V ELI (Grade 23), which meets the ASTM F136 standard for surgical implants, while the standard plates and meshes are made of commercially pure titanium Grade 2 (pp. 2, 16, 33–34, 36). The catalogue also lists cobalt–chromium alloy, zirconia, the polymers PEEK and PMMA, and ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene among the company's materials, and surgical guides and anatomical models are printed from medical-grade acrylic resin (pp. 2–4). For load-bearing implants, strength is calculated in advance on a computer model using finite element analysis (pp. 5, 36). The standard plates come with either a smooth polished surface or a proprietary surface treatment, EAAM, which the company says is intended to support osseointegration (pp. 16, 34), and biocompatibility is evaluated under the ISO 10993 series (p. 36). The company's catalogue calls its two paediatric systems, for the skull and the lower jaw, “first in the world” (pp. 11, 24); the paediatric cranioplasty system was first installed in 2022, according to the catalogue. We found no independent confirmation of this. In its scientific work, Hyebrid names the Institute of Molecular Biology of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia and the CANDLE Synchrotron Research Institute as partners (p. 36). All of these are the company's own descriptions: we found no independent data on outcomes.

On registration, the catalogue says the company plans to apply for CE marking in the European Union after a five-year clinical observation period, and that a submission to the US FDA is also only planned (p. 35). The contacts page at the end of the catalogue gives an ISO 13485:2016 certificate for “MEDICAL” LLC. This is a standard for the manufacturer's quality management system, not an approval of the devices themselves. The catalogue does not say who issued the certificate, and we have not checked it against a register. The catalogue does not mention registration with the Armenian Ministry of Health; if this matters to you, ask the company and the surgeon.

Who it is free for and what to check

At the bottom of the hyebrid.tech home page there is a separate block about the military. The English version says “100% Free” “For all those soldiers, who took part in the war”; the Russian version also says 100% free, while the Armenian version says “100% discount” for all servicemen who took part in the war. It refers to the production of titanium articular heads, implants and prostheses. Other sources also confirm that the work is free for the military: a column in EVN Report dated 15 February 2023 says the appliances are provided “free of charge”, and the company's listing in the yell.am directory, updated in July 2026, mentions a “Free Service for Military Personnel”. The company's 2026 catalogue says nothing about this: it mentions war only once, as the reason the company was founded (p. 1). The rest of the company's work is commercial and, according to the website, is aimed at doctors, dentists and laboratories. The only price list on the site covers dental laboratory work and was valid from 20 September to 20 November 2021, and the catalogue gives no prices, so we do not quote any; ask the company what an implant costs for a civilian patient.

How to contact Hyebrid

The implant is placed by a surgeon in a hospital, so it is worth discussing it with the doctor treating the patient as well: a neurosurgeon or a maxillofacial surgeon. In its catalogue the company says the implant material is not a contraindication for MRI, CT or EEG, but it may cause artefacts on the images (p. 7): before any scan, tell the doctor that you have a titanium implant.

If you need an arm or leg prosthesis

Hyebrid's 2026 catalogue lists no arm or leg prostheses: neither those worn over a residual limb nor hip, knee, shoulder or elbow joint replacements. All of its products are for the skull and the jaw and face, and the only joint is the temporomandibular joint (pp. 6, 22), although the “About us” section says the laboratory makes prosthetic solutions for reconstruction “throughout the body” (p. 1). Other sources say otherwise: the yell.am directory lists hip, knee, shoulder and elbow joint prostheses among the company's products, the Armenian text of the company's website names people who have lost limbs among those who need its products, and a 2023 column in EVN Report says Hyebrid's expertise also covers customising limb prostheses. Ask the company directly whether it currently makes anything for arms or legs.

Arm and leg prostheses are also made by prosthetics centres. One of them operates at the Zinvori Tun (“Soldier's Home”) rehabilitation centre. According to the centre's website, it was set up in 2018 by a non-governmental organisation together with Yerevan State Medical University and the Ministry of Defence, and people wounded while defending the homeland receive free rehabilitation treatment there. According to the same website, a prosthetics centre opened there in April 2021, where soldiers who lost arms or legs in the 2020 war received prostheses. Address: 58 Abovyan St., Yerevan; phone (011) 202520. The Medaro catalogue also lists other prosthetics centres, Interorto and NANO-PRO; ask them directly about terms for servicemen.

Hyebrid products: images from the catalogue

Below are Hyebrid products from the company's 2026 catalogue (second edition): the first is a photograph, the others are 3D images of the devices that the company included in the catalogue. The article's cover image is also from the catalogue: a temporomandibular joint replacement on a skull model (p. 22). The catalogue was provided by the company and is not published on hyebrid.tech. We do not publish the catalogue's images of patients.