“We’re excited about the momentum we’re building. We think we’ve made a good initial splash here,” Enovis CEO Matt Trerotola recently told MassDevice.
One of the largest orthopedic device companies in the world, Wilmington, Delaware–based Enovis has had a string of positive news lately:
- Financial results swung to a profit as part of Street-beating fourth quarter 2023 results.
- The company expects further momentum as it integrates LimaCorporate and its patient-tailored, 3D-printed titanium implants for complex reconstructive surgeries. Enovis completed the $846 million acquisition in January.
- Enovis‘ DJO subsidiary in January launched its next-gen DonJoy Roam OA knee brace for osteoarthritis or other knee pain and instability. Enovis says it’s kicking off a multiyear cadence of new product introductions across its Recon and Prevention and Recovery (P&R) businesses.
Trerotola recently told MassDevice that his strategy for Enovis is growth through innovation and acquisition.
“Each time we do a new acquisition with new technology, our channel partners in that business get something new to sell. … Something they know and like about us is that we’re going to be investing organically in innovation, but we’re also going to sometimes bring things in and faster through acquisitions,” he said.
Trerotola had some thoughts about what’s next for Enovis and the orthopedic device industry. (The comments below have been lightly edited for space and clarity.)
MassDevice: How do you see the potential for 3D printing in orthopedics now that you’ve acquired LimaCorporate?
Trerotola: Lima has been a real pioneer in the area of metal 3D printing. They have this Trabecular Titanium proprietary material that they have developed and used, and they have pioneered 3D printing for some of the toughest custom implant situations — very difficult revisions or cancer situations. For some of the very toughest implant situations, surgeons turn to Lima as a real pioneer and leader in what they can do with custom design and with 3D printing. Lima has also used that capability to design and develop more traditional implants that are not personalized, but they have a lot more latitude in terms of being able to cost-effectively create designs and different sizes because parts of them are going to be 3D printed. That just creates a degree of flexibility around what you can do that is higher than when you’re doing it through more traditional manufacturing needs.
The kind of mainstream implant offerings from Lima, they’re not personalized at this point. But the designs are dialed in more, because of the use of 3D printing and more custom design. There certainly is the opportunity to look at more personalized implants. But at this point, the market is not really paying for personalized implants, so we see that as a future growth option that we’ve got the capability to pursue. But we like the fact that Lima’s focus has been on a more currently valuable and practical focus of these custom implants and how you use 3D printing in your designs in manufacturing.
MassDevice: Nearly two years ago, Enovis launched ARVIS (augmented reality visualization and information system) after acquiring Insight Medical. How do you envision these types of software-powered solutions improving surgical outcomes?
Trerotola: It’s still a market where you compete on better implants. We take a lot of share year in and year out with better implants. But now you have this additional dimension of enabling tech. I think it’s great that it creates a new dimension of competition in the market. In shoulder, we’ve been really successful historically with our Match Point enabling tech … preoperative planning, patient-specific, 3D printing instrument opportunities for surgeons that want to do that. And now with ARVIS coming in knee initially — but the opportunity to bring that into shoulder certainly over time — we feel excited about what we’re bringing into the marketplace in terms of the next wave of enabling tech that’s going to be able to help our surgeons improve their surgical procedures and capture a lot of data as they’re doing that.
We’ve got some other interesting things we’re working on beyond that on the front end and the back end, things like predictive analytics to be able to take surgical plans and bounce them off tons of different situations and come up with the best surgery for this patient in this situation. … Feed that through an augmented reality guidance system so the surgeon can see what is probably the best plan, but then they can make a thoughtful decision looking at the broader context of the patient at the minute and either do exactly that or do something different. And then they can record all the data while they’re doing that, accumulate that over time, have the ability after tracking the success of patients to make closed-loop changes in terms of decisions that are made in surgery and how they affect outcomes. It’s really exciting, what’s going to be able to be done.
MassDevice: What are your thoughts on surgical robotics in orthopedics?
Trerotola: We sat the first wave out with the big robots as a smaller player — and not a huge player— in knee, which was the place where the robots were coming on big. We’ve really been focused on next-generation technologies that we think are the second, third, fourth generation of what’s going to matter here: smaller footprint, less costly, doesn’t add much cost to the surgery, doesn’t add time to the surgery. We’re excited about how that plays out. We’re already in the game in knee with ARVIS, excited about the feedback we’re getting on that, and getting ready to extend our offering beyond Match Point and shoulder as we bring that to market not too far down the road.
Trerotola spoke last year with our DeviceTalks Weekly podcast. Check it out.