Medical Device Daily

NEW YORK — Healthcare conferences are very much like beauty pageants. Companies are strutting their stuff, putting their best feet forward, showing it off.

A reporter doesn’t get much hard news from these affairs, only the as-expected positives from the presenting companies, so for the most part you’re looking at lots of bells and a bunch of whistles, the smoke a-swirling.

So how to judge? Which companies come across as winners? Which ones need some glitter — at least in their conference presentations?

Well, it’s actually pretty simple. Since these presentations are mostly cosmetics, the cynical media person probably first considers such things as presenter enthusiasm, conveying some excitement about the company, and after that some rather small things — such as: does the presenter simply read off the Power Points (not a very good approach since one might assume that attendees actually are able to read the Power Points for themselves); or does he or she (but not many she presenters) provide something complementary to the Power Points or even entertaining, as did John Simpson, MD, in his excellent presentation concerning his company FoxHollow Technologies at last week’s Piper Jaffray Healthcare Conference (Medical Device Daily, Dec. 6, 2005). In his presentation, Simpson used the not-so secret “sauces” of off-the cuff comments here, a little bit of humor there (but not so much to irritate).

There’s content, of course. Does the content point to something new and different, a company looking forward — or behind? Is the rosy color real, or just rouge dabbed on the cheeks of the proverbial pig?

So.

Let’s judge just three of the presentations from the Piper Jaffray conference, using companies in the orthopedics sector. Taking a page from the (controversial and highly flawed) BCS system in the U.S. to rank college football teams (the football with the pointy ends, to distinguish it from that other “football”), we’ll rank them One, Two and Three — with the frank expectation that howls of objections will follow.

The three companies and their rank were Zimmer , No. 1; Wright Medical Group , No. 2; and Stryker , No. 3 (and remember, these judgments are just from half-hour presentations).

Presenting for Zimmer was Dave Dvorak, group president, global businesses and chief legal officer.

Though no speaking dynamo, Dvorak provided a picture of Zimmer that was entirely forward-looking and suggesting a range of great expectations. He began by saying that the company is attempting to “drive disruptive changes within the markets that we serve,” phraseology suggesting something different, not just the status quo.

Orthopedics, of course, has consistently been tied to the metal and plastic side of the device arena, but Dvorak probably struck all the right keys in emphasizing the company’s work in biologics and “orthobiologics,” and putting these under the heading of “biosolutions.”

Dvorak outlined a variety of key projects that had to strike attendees as forward-looking, underlining new partnering projects with companies such as Revivicor (a developer of the first cloned pigs — cloning being controversial, yes, but a technology driving into the future).

But the highlight of his presentation was his overview of Zimmer’s increasing emphasis on “women’s muscular-skeletal health” and the company’s search for “gender solutions” — not exactly the snappiest of phrases but grabbers if you’re looking for something new in this sector.

(And the company’s press kit features a young healthy woman on the cover — the type most likely to wrench a knee out playing tennis, and this is an emphasis that Dvorak said had won the company hundreds of “media impressions” around the country with its focus and obvious appeal to the reporter looking for a new health column “hook.”

“Women are three times less likely to undergo [orthopedic] procedures though they suffer more disability” from such problems, Dvorak noted. “Knee replacements have long been available in many different sizes, but that doesn’t resolve the anatomical differences,” he added, following this with a more technical analysis of the differences in male and female knees which support the company’s somewhat controversial emphasis on its products for women.

“It’s not the size that matters, it’s the shape,” he said.

As No. 2 in our ranking, the case for Wright Medical was presented by its CEO Gary Henley.

While offering no wonderful polish as a presenter, Henley also expressed some excitement about the company’s efforts in biologics, though his emphasis on “innovative products, growth and a good management team” didn’t cause the wave to break out in the room. These are standard and all companies claim them.

Henley was best in talking about Wright’s Graft Jacket product, used to repair tendons, cartilage and rotator cuff injuries.

He said that Graft Jacket has been called “biological duct tape — I kind of like that coined phrase.”

But the most interesting part of Henley’s presentation was a video of former tennis star Jimmy Connors, walking up and down a hospital corridor the day after having a hip replacement operation with one of Wright Medical’s minimally invasive systems.

Our No. 3 in this ranking of conference presentations was the Stryker offering — essentially a yawner — presented by Dean Bergy, the company’s vice president and CFO.

Giving such presentations probably isn’t Bergy’s favorite company assignment, and he didn’t do a bad job, but his presentation was chock full of phrases such as “unparalleled consistency,” “long-term growth,” “reduced exposure to individual risk and cycles” and various units “dedicated” to this and that. The essence of this presentation was a grocery list: a recounting of products and prospects but not much pizzazz.

And for someone who has been attending these Piper Jaffray affairs for some time now, we found the company’s main emphasis on producing “double-digit” growth a come-down.

It is a clear come-down from the past expectations provided as a constant Stryker drumbeat by former CEO John Brown who always enthusiastically promised – with the company then delivering — a growth rate of 20%.

So there are our presentation ranking: No’s. 1, 2, and 3 — for whatever they’re worth.