Zimmer Biomet: In Studio with Mark Bezjak, Joe Urban, and Joe Mullings

Yeah, great question. Truly the opportunity, right? The opportunity to differentiate musculoskeletal care and truly believe in that. And over the 16 years that I've been here, I've had multiple opportunities to advance my career. The corporation has absolutely got behind my back and just really had the diversity in different things across the board. And so to your question though, ultimately what's really kept me here, it's the people, right? It's the people, the ability to make a difference, and the leadership that allows us to do that.

Yeah, it's to be the boldest MedTech company on the planet, right? I mean frankly, and it resides in a mission. The mission of the organization is to alleviate pain and improve the quality of life for people around the world. And it's not just the implant, while it's a big piece of who we are and what we need to be, the advancement of the technology to take it to that next level for a multitude of end users, whether it's the patient, the physician, the payer, the provider. They're all super important in our journey and have a stake at the table.

Yeah, so I mean joint replacements is probably one of the most successful procedures, but it's not good enough, right? 20% of patients who get a knee replacement are not happy with their outcomes. And it's ultimately the question why, right? And historically, metal and plastic, physician puts in an implant, patient leaves, rehabs. How are you doing? I don't know, I feel good, maybe, maybe not. And the reason for innovation is to be able to understand that complete journey from the time the patient walks in the door. We have a product called myMobility that engages the patient 90 days pre-op. You're able to monitor that patient, to pre-hab them the appropriate way. Intraoperatively, the patient has the ability to have a robotic knee replacement with Rosa. You're able to capture data there, it gets pushed up to the cloud with pre-operative data. You put a smart implant in with PIQ, you collect data post-op, and now you've got the complete continuum of care for that patient, that complete patient journey. And now you can identify what's happening through that journey, good or bad. It benefits the patient, benefits the physician, benefits payers and the providers. And so that's the ripe for innovation. It's a surgical procedure with metal and plastic moving into the opportunity to have predictive analytics with all of those touch points throughout the journey.

Yeah, there's no question. We have patients coming in asking for PIQ with our physicians because they do want to be that active participant. They want to know how they're measuring up against other people. It's that social environment where you can compare yourself to others, understand where you're at in that journey, all the while having what we would call a guardian angel sitting over top of you, which would be the physician telling you, hey you're doing great, or no you're not, you need to rehab harder, you need to come in and see me if there's a problem, or everything's great, continue on as is. So it is important for the patient. They are an active participant versus an active receiver historically what it would be. But now it's completely different. They're a complete part of their journey and they're responsible and understand what they can or can't do to improve their outcomes. And it's great that we see this coming into orthopedics because while some people may say well orthopedics doesn't seem to be as high tech as heart valves or neuro implants, right? But none of those have active sensors in them that are reporting back the performance yet. We're seeing that trend with companies like Canary and partnerships happening in the industry starting to become almost expected down range.

Well, it started with the leadership, right? And it started with that statement of the boldest MedTech company on the planet. It was probably even before that when that statement started, but we knew basically that 20% of total joints were problematic and nobody answered the question why, right? You know, why is it that 20% of patients are just not as happy as what you'd expect them to be based upon how the surgical procedure was done? And understanding why really drove that from the very top down to understand what was going on.

Yeah, well it's hard to keep up, right? I think that's one of the things I learned early on. So I've been working with Avon for almost five years now and I'll tell you, I took this role because of him, right? Because in order to do the things that we know we have to do to change the delivery of musculoskeletal care, you have to work at that pace, right? You have to work with that energy and you have to think creatively and outside the box. And so it's a huge piece of, to your question you started with, you know, why am I still here after 16, 17 years? It's because I do see where we're going, but I also understand Avon's passion and energy is what's going to help us get there, right? And I think orthopedics over the years is kind of that last frontier, right? You look at cardiac, you look at all these things that moved, and orthopedics has kind of been that stalemate. And over the last four or five years, that started to pivot with the advancement of technology and adoption of all the different technologies. And in order for us to continue at that pace, we have to run fast. And watching Avon, his energy, his gregariousness, everything about him kind of drives the organization to make sure we keep up with him, right?

Yeah, I think it starts with sensored technology, right? We're all in on smart technology with our PIQ platform. I think the interconnectivity is super important to be able to get to a frontier of predictive analytics, right? What I view potentially somewhere down the road is the ability to manage the patient for who they are and able to treat patients differently based upon the intraoperative data that we get, the post-operative data, the pre-operative data. And now you're starting to predict how to treat the patient the best. And so when you think of smart technology, when you think of robotic platforms, augmented reality, we have Hip Insights, we have OrthoGrid, we have all these different AI components. It's bringing them all together to be able to give you the best data and vision to make sure you're providing the best care for your patient. And when you think of the ability to bring technology into an outpatient setting where patients want to go for their joint replacements, and you think of how do you improve the clinical outcome for a patient, how do you make it more efficient, how do you do all those things that you or I if we were to go in to get a total joint done, you would want to get in and out and you'd want to rehab on your own and do those things. And that's what's happening, right? That shift is happening from a hospital setting or an acute care setting into an outpatient setting. And as we think of that movement along with where we think it's going to be in 24 to 36 months, that is absolutely where it's going. And Zimmer Biomet, quite frankly, is leading the front on there. We have a partnership with CBRE, one of the largest builders and construction companies on the globe, to build ASCs and partner with them. We have the robotic platform, the interconnectivity, you think of the efficiencies. We have technologies and softwares that improve efficiencies intraoperatively. And so as you think of the important things moving forward, not just in the robotic or smart space, it's much bigger and broader than that. Putting it all together is key.

Yeah, yeah. It's almost like a platform that services and supports all of it. And what Joe is saying, not just from a business unit perspective, but even on the commercial channel side, we have leaders in the Recon space, we have leaders in the technology space, we have leaders in the ASC space. I think it's super important to have that drill down focus to make sure we're executing appropriately. Which, when we talked about earlier the development of people in the organization, the opportunity to move and do more is super important for advancement. And I think not only for the performance of the company, but for the internal culture of our people, it's a great thing. And I think it's going to change the trajectory of who we are as we move from just a metal and plastic company into a solutions based organization.

No, I agree. I think the one closing thought I would have is our basis is reconstruction, right? And we will continue to advance that platform. But understanding that we can't get to where we want to be without the continued adoption of technology, the intersection of efficiencies. We've got to continue to maintain those clinical outcomes. We'll continue to have a focus on metal and plastic, but our big focus to move forward, excuse me, our big focus to move forward to be the boldest MedTech company is to improve technology and make sure it's part of everything we do. And so from a talent perspective, from a product advancement perspective, we have to embrace that and we have to have the diverse thinking that we didn't have 5, 10 years ago. And so moving forward, super exciting. And I truly believe we're at that tipping point.