JULY 2019 // CHARLOTTE 65
The brace limits Omarian’s active lifestyle. His mother,
Tamara Riley, says her son wears his brace maybe four
out of seven days per week “just because he’s a 16-year-
old boy.” But Omarian’s scoliosis is mild, and she says the
brace has dramatically improved his posture.
“I don’t have anything to compare the UNYQ brace
to, but it denitely looks like it’s more comfortable—he
can breathe, he can wear it underneath his clothing,
and you really don’t notice it,” Tamara says. “I think it’s
a good brace for a teenager who has a lot of condence
problems, and they don’t want to be embarrassed by
their peers.”
This is, of course, exactly what UNYQ and Chap-
man were hoping for: a patient experience that’s “more
streamlined, comfortable and pleasant, plus deliver(s) a
better outcome,” says Lisa Tweardy, UNYQ’s vice presi-
dent of orthopedics, who heads the Charlotte oce.
UNYQ, co-founded in 2014 in San Francisco and Seville,
Spain, opened its Charlotte oce in 2017. The Research
Triangle and its host of medical innovators is only a few
hours away, so landing UNYQ was a coup of sorts for a
city known more for banking and breweries. Tweardy
cited Charlotte’s prime East Coast location, major airport,
and rst-rate doctors like OrthoCarolina’s as factors. Also,
she said, the company has more room to grow. Tweardy
says UNYQ is excited to help inaugurate Charlotte’s devel-
oping health care sphere.
Chapman is excited, too, but for additional reasons.
He’s a North Carolina native who earned an undergradu-
ate degree at Davidson College, a doctorate at Wake For-
est, and served his residency at Duke. If he can use North
Carolina companies’ products in his practice, he does.Chapman uses iScribes of Durham for dictation and has
started collaborating with Cutting Edge Spine in Wax-
haw for input on implants.
“Having a North Carolina avor and bent and some
personal connection to it, for me, matters,” he says. “I’m
not going to pick it over something more eective or
more ecient or more cost-eective. I’m going to pick
that every time for patients. But if I’ve got two similar
options, I’m going to pick the one that, yeah, it’s nice that
it’s homegrown.”
Having local access to UNYQ mattered to Tamara Riley
when she ordered the scoliosis brace for her son. A rep-
resentative met her aer work to perform the body scan
of Omarian—done with an iPad in a matter of seconds—
to calculate the dimensions for his brace. The company
helped her set up a payment plan for the out-of-pocket
expense—about $1,500—and, aer Omarian received his
brace, called her to check on him.
“Every question I had to ask, they were able to answer
it,” Tamara says, “but there weren’t many questions I had
to ask, because they kind of made things clear up front.”
And who’s to say that UNYQ isn’t the rst in a wave
of Charlotte-based medical technology companies?
“There’s a lot of things that are coming together, that
Charlotte could become this up-and-coming medi-
cal place,” Chapman says. “We’ll never not be known
as a banking city, but it’s fun to see other areas get
involved.”JODIE VALADE is a freelance journalist in Charlotte. Follow on Twitter
@JodieValade or contact her at [email protected].UNYQ’s Charlotte
operations manager,
Michael Jackson,
removes a Spine
Wears brace from the
company’s 3D printer.
UNYQ, based in San
Francisco, opened an
East Coast o
ce in
Charlotte in 2017.The Research Triangle ... is only a few hours away,
so landing UNYQ was a coup of sorts for a city
known more for banking and breweries.
UNYQ