Livanova | Franco Poletti | Biomedical valley

Today we clearly learn about innovation, naturally speaking about innovation applied to companies. We talk about product innovation, but today I want to talk more about process innovation. Not that product innovation is less important—it's undoubtedly very important—but in parallel, as I will list, we believe it's also important to update processes. Now, in the Western world, we deal with medical devices, so we essentially observe patients, clients, and patients with complex pathologies that we know in cardiac surgery, as far as we're concerned. The need to put the patient at the center of the healthcare system is becoming increasingly evident, unlike the past where basically the doctor said, 'If the doctor says you're fine, you're fine; if you're dead, you're dead.' Now, instead, we have a somewhat more structured approach to therapy for patients, and so different centers are trying to put the patient at the center of the healthcare system. This became even more evident with the pandemic—we saw it, we're living it every day, unfortunately for quite some time now. So, to help this path, a model can come to our aid: the so-called agile thinking model, a methodology already studied and applied in the 1950s in production systems and automobiles—Toyota and all the history behind it. It was then revised and extended in the 1990s, and it perfectly suits managing particularly complex problems and processes. This can also be applied outside production and operations. What we are doing at Livanova, at the corporate level, we are working on three main pillars: one is focusing on patient problems—so, as I said, a patient-centered approach; the second important element is valuing people's contributions—unlike the past where there was a boss who knew everything and decided everything, the bottom-up approach helps to combine more experiences, more creativity, more ideas; the third element is fighting waste, both material and especially process waste. All these three elements are brought together in continuous improvement, essentially defined as Kaizen. So the goal is to strive for perfection, to constantly improve by continuously reviewing processes to make steady improvements over time. At Livanova, we started this journey a few years ago; we labeled it the Livanova Business System. The power of a business system is to extend this Kaizen approach to all corporate functions in a structured way, not just applied to production as is already well known. Our goal is to extend it to all corporate functions so that the cycle of identifying the patient's need and satisfying that need closes and continues to evolve with the concept of continuous improvement. Now, to do this, it is necessary to constantly review needs, for example, so needs must be reanalyzed constantly—patient needs. We need to analyze the level of satisfaction of these needs, measure the quality of the service provided, pay close attention to waste and costs, and consequently to prices. So the closed loop defines objectives, planning, execution, and monitoring. We adopt a very structured problem-solving approach—not just 'there's a problem, we solve it,' but a truly structured approach with particularly tight models. We adopt the concept of 'going to the gemba,' so going to seek information where it is generated, where it originates. From there, the need to involve all employees, all those who live the process. This clearly makes the process probably more effective on one hand, but certainly more complex on the other. The information, I repeat, is to avoid going into silos; it is found everywhere. Clearly, needs are better known in the market—patients and those who follow them, doctors, so HCPs by definition are those who know these needs. It is important to go into the field, collect, be able to know what to look for, where to look for it, how to look for it, and then make this information usable so that it answers the critical questions upstream. Another source of information—there are many—very important are corporate ERPs, so within the company there are many; the problem is extracting them, knowing where to find them, defining them, and assembling them so that they also provide resources. All this must tend towards the continuous and infinite search for perfection. Clearly, this implies knowing when you start, but it is a process that never ends. We started this journey at the corporate level a few years ago. It is a great challenge, a cultural change. You know very well that cultural changes are very complex, and in Italy we know them well—they are even more complex than in other countries. But we are convinced it will bring the expected results. It is obvious that it is very important to lead these changes by example. The example must necessarily come from the top, and on this, Livanova is objectively committed. Thank you all.