DeviceTalks Boston 2024: Our favorite panels and new additions

Our team picks favorites from our upcoming show, including some new additions to the program.

Leaders from CMR Surgical, the developer of the Versius surgical robotics system, will speak at DeviceTalks Boston 2024. [Photo courtesy of CMR Surgical]

I enjoy reading bookstore staff recommendations. It’s nice to see how people in the know like to spend their time.

But if you asked me to pick my favorite panels on the agenda for DeviceTalks Boston, taking place May 1–2, 2024 at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, I couldn’t do it.

In fact, I won’t do it. Sorry, dear reader, I’ve put too much into this agenda to pick one favorite session. Plus, I owe neutrality to our speakers — amazing professionals willing to give up two days to help me create something. That’s a covenant that I cannot violate by selecting a favorite.

But I can put our editorial team on the spot to pick their favorites. And…

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January 2024 edition: The Leadership in Medtech issue



 

Opening the brain’s secret back door: A conversation with Synchron co-founder and CEO Dr. Tom Oxley

How Recor Medical won the renal denervation race for FDA approval

Medtech’s biggest personnel moves of 2023

Leadership and innovation in medtech

Creativity, energy, agility — those are three words Recor Medical CEO Lara Barghout used to describe the culture at the world’s first device developer to win FDA approval for hypertension-treating renal denervation (RDN).

You can add persistence to that list. Ever since its founding in 2009, Recor Medical and its team has been pushing to deliver a safe and effective RDN system. The seemingly long odds got longer as larger competitors pulled the plug on their own programs — or in Medtronic’s case, pushed on despite clinical trial failures and won approval shortly after Recor.

Our annual Leadership in Medtech issue of Medical Design &a…

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The most important medtech leadership changes of 2023

Former Johnson & Johnson EVP and MedTech Worldwide Chair Ashley McEvoy [Photo courtesy of Johnson & Johnson]

From hirings and firings to promotions, resignations and surprising shake-ups, these were the most important medtech leadership changes of the year.

By Associate Editor Sean Whooley and Managing Editor Jim Hammerand

The leadership change at Johnson & Johnson MedTech was a surprising shift that ended up as the year’s biggest medtech leadership change of 2023.

In October, J&J EVP and J&J MedTech Worldwide Chair Ashley McEvoy announced her resignation from the world’s second-largest device manufacturer. She’s staying on into the first quarter of 2024 while her successor, Tim Schmid, gets settled into his new role.

Schmid, a 30-year J&J vet who was most recently company group chair of J&J MedTech Asia Pacific, said he’s “committed to building ev…

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Zimmer Biomet’s Liane Teplitsky on the ‘magic’ of data integration

Zimmer Biomet’s Persona IQ smart knee implant has sensors to measure device performance and patient recovery. [Image courtesy of Zimmer Biomet]

Zimmer Biomet’s robotics, technology and data president offers data integration advice, identifies opportunities beyond orthopedics and discusses tech she’s looking for.

Zimmer Biomet is collecting more data than it knows what to do with — and that’s a great opportunity, says Liane Teplitsky.

Teplitsky is the orthopedics developer’s president of global robotics and technology and data solutions. Her domain has expanded rapidly since she joined Zimmer Biomet from Abbott’s cardiac arrhythmia business in 2020.

Back then, Zimmer Biomet’s ZBEdge digital and robotic technology suite consisted of the mymobility patient care app and the Rosa surgical robotics system for brain and total knee procedures. Now, ZBEdge also includ…

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The 10 largest orthopedic device companies in the world

The goal of Stryker’s Mako robotic-arm assisted surgery is to provide more predictable outcomes. [Image courtesy of Stryker]

Two of the world’s largest orthopedic device companies expect accelerated revenue growth this year.

Stryker and Zimmer Biomet both upped their 2023 guidance during recent earnings calls, a sign that orthopedic procedures are bouncing back from the COVID-19 pandemic.

GlobalData predicted earlier this year that the recovery will lift the ortho devices market to nearly $50 billion this year. The question is whether companies can continue the momentum. Stryker and ZB are betting on innovation, building arrays of products and services around their surgical robotics systems and surgical planning and digital health tools.

During Zimmer Biomet’s second-quarter earnings call, CEO Bryan Hanson noted that ZB has 40 planned product launches between this year and the end of 2025, the …

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Find solutions to your most demanding medtech problem at DeviceTalks West

Add some essentials to your toolbox with engineering expertise from our upcoming show in California.

Intuitive President Dave Rosa will give a keynote interview at DeviceTalks West 2023. [Photo courtesy of Intuitive]

In the medical device industry, stubborn problems can cost millions in development expenses and delay the introduction of new life-saving tools and technologies.

That’s why we build our DeviceTalks meetings as a forum where successful medical device engineers, manufacturers and market-builders can share their best practices, providing solutions that help clear hurdles, speed product development and potentially save lives.

DeviceTalks attendees leave our meeting with notebooks full of critical advice and pockets full of business cards. We’ll help fill both at DeviceTalks West, which takes place Oct. 18-19 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California. You can view the full agenda on our…

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Artificial intelligence: What medtech’s top influencers think

Artificial intelligence’s effect on medtech was a question that came up continually during our DeviceTalks Boston show in early May.

Here is what some of the top influencers in the industry had to say:

Boston Scientific CEO Mike Mahoney [Photo courtesy of Boston Scientific]

Boston Scientific CEO Mike Mahoney on artificial intelligence and medtech

“I’ll give you some practical applications. … We have manufacturing plants around the world, and we have great quality systems, and we have great quality engineers who inspect everything, and we have a zillion microscopes looking at every little product that we have all over the world. Our team is leveraging AI capabilities for visualization inspection rather than the human eye constantly doing that with the mistakes that are inherent and scrapping products and so forth. … We’re seeing cost productivity and better quality by just leveraging AI in our…

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They said it at DeviceTalks Boston 2023

Medical device industry leaders from Boston Scientific, Abbott, ZimVie, Medtronic, Stryker and more met at DeviceTalks Boston to share lessons learned and their perspectives on industry trends, device design and medtech innovation.

BD Chair, CEO and President Tom Polen (right) at DeviceTalks Boston with DeviceTalks Editorial Director Tom Salemi [Photo by Jeff Pinette for Medical Design & Outsourcing]

Bidding farewell to DeviceTalks Boston 2023, we look back at an exceptional two-day medical device conference teeming with insights from over 100 top industry leaders.

These experts unfolded many complexities of the medtech industry in more than 35 sessions, walking attendees from the medical device product development continuum through the latest medical innovations and strategies to tackle regulatory challenges, prototyping, manufacturing, product launches and more.

Between the high-profile keynote int…

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The ZimVie Tether helps kids with scoliosis — if they can get it in time

The ZimVie Tether system is FDA approved for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis under a humanitarian device exemption. [Image courtesy of ZimVie]

The ZimVie Tether is a groundbreaking system for treating adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, developed with the help of surgeons who saw an opportunity to improve the lives of their pediatric patients.

But for every patient the clock is ticking, as children are only eligible if they have enough growth ahead of them for the technology to make a difference. And all too often, insurance companies can delay the treatment so long that patients are no longer eligible if and when insurers approve the procedure.

ZimVie SVP and Global Spine President Rebecca Whitney spoke about the system’s development and commercialization with ZimVie Spine Global R&D Director Ryan Watson today at DeviceTalks Boston.

Re…

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ZimVie discloses executive pay and severance for first C-suite exit

ZimVie executive pay is public for the first time a year after the spine and dental device developer spun off from Zimmer Biomet.

Westminster, Colorado–based ZimVie (Nasdaq:ZIMV) disclosed pay for its top executives in late March ahead of the May 12 inaugural annual meeting of shareholders. Investors will weigh in on the executive pay packages for the first time in an advisory “say-on-pay” vote.

One of those executives is no longer with ZimVie. In annual proxy filings with the Securities and Exchange Committee, the company said former SVP and Chief Human Resources Officer David Harmon “separated from the company” on Jan. 13, 2023.

Harmon joined ZimVie in September 2021 and was announced as part of the leadership team before the spinoff launched in March 2022. He was previously the chief people officer at Gannett; he now lists himself as self-employed on his LinkedIn profile.

The proxy filing doesn’t say why Ha…

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May 2023 edition: Endolumik’s big step for safety, ortho hot topics, SaMD development lessons



Endolumik’s illuminated device takes a big step for safety

The top orthopedic device news out of AAOS 2023

SaMD development lessons from Cordio’s voice AI heart failure app

Orthopedic device tech advances

High in the Wind River mountains of present-day Wyoming, the inhabitants of a remote alpine village — perhaps the oldest in North America — may have used fresh rawhide soaked in water as a splint to immobilize fractured bones thousands of years ago.

Before them, the ancient Egyptians used tree bark and linens, and native tribes of South Australia used thick clay.

They would all no doubt be amazed by the modern practice of orthopedics on display at this year’s American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) annual meeting — after they recovered from the shock of the scintillating sights of Las Vegas.

In this edition of Medical Design & Outsourcing, Executive E…

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May 2023 edition: Endolumik’s big step for safety, ortho hot topics, SaMD development lessons



Endolumik’s illuminated device takes a big step for safety

The top orthopedic device news out of AAOS 2023

SaMD development lessons from Cordio’s voice AI heart failure app

Orthopedic device tech advances

High in the Wind River mountains of present-day Wyoming, the inhabitants of a remote alpine village — perhaps the oldest in North America — may have used fresh rawhide soaked in water as a splint to immobilize fractured bones thousands of years ago.

Before them, the ancient Egyptians used tree bark and linens, and native tribes of South Australia used thick clay.

They would all no doubt be amazed by the modern practice of orthopedics on display at this year’s American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) annual meeting — after they recovered from the shock of the scintillating sights of Las Vegas.

In this edition of Medical Design & Outsourcing, Executive E…

Read more
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