Bioventus Surgical Succeeds with Thought Leadership Event at NASS

Five years ago Bioventus was just getting into the surgical orthobiologics business with the acquisition of OSTEOAMP. As the business has grown to fill out its portfolio and its distribution network, it has also matured in its approach to marketing. At the 2019 North American Spine Society meeting in Chicago last month, the Surgical marketing team stepped out beyond the confines of the Bioventus trade show booth to host a different kind of afterhours event.

“We have exhibited at NASS since 2014 and starting in 2015 we invited surgeons to typical hors d’oeuvre and cocktail networking events,” said David Osgood, Senior Manager, Strategic Customer Relations, “We relied on our distributors to bring them along and it was really more social than anything else. Getting our name out and building relationships. This year we wanted to stake a claim to some thought leadership.”

Specifically, the team wanted to develop a roundtable discussion of surgeons sharing insights and experiences using biologics including allografts, demineralized bone matrices, synthetics and cell-based matrices for spine surgery. The discussion was not going to be specific to OSTEOAMP or any Bioventus products. The event would take place at a hotel away from the show floor, be moderated by a surgeon and feature some kind of live audience interaction.

As invitations to the event went to spine surgeons and distributors, the goal was to leave this audience with the impression that Bioventus was acting as a thought leader by facilitating a sharing of learnings and engagement in dialog about biologics. In letting the surgeons moderate and sit on panel, Bioventus was letting the voices of the customers be heard unfiltered.

“The tone for this was set when we got Dr. Wellington Hsu of Northwestern Medical Group in Chicago, to moderate and host the discussion,” said David. “He is widely recognized as the leading spinal biologics surgeon within the US spine market and does not use any of our products.”

Dr. Hsu’s participation clearly conveyed that this was not a program being run by a company shill or favorite key opinion leader (KOL). The discussion would be real, not an infomercial for a Bioventus product.

The room listens as Dr. Scott Daffner from West Virginia Medicine presents on managing patient risk.

To keep a focused program, the discussion was limited to sharing procedural, product and patient experiences when using biologics for spine surgery. In addition to moderating, Dr. Hsu also presented in the procedural part of the discussion and which also included a presentation from Dr. Khoi Than, a neurosurgeon from Duke Health.

Dr. Scott Daffner from West Virginia Medicine presented on managing patient risk with biologics while Dr. Josh Ellwitz from Bronson Health System and Dr. Harshpal Singh of the North Jersey Brain & Spine Center rounded out the panel and spoke more specifically to actual products used and subsequent patient outcomes during their presentations.

An ARS system was used for instant polling among attendees. This question is related to choosing biologics for use.

An automated response system with 12 questions used to poll the audience also helped keep the evening lively. That said, no matter the program, it’s never easy to get an audience for events like this as NASS attendees have all manner of business commitments, old acquaintances to catch up with and new opportunities to explore over just a few days. The surgical team set the bar high and they cleared it.

“In addition to this stellar panel, we had 38 medical professionals and 24 distributors in attendance and we believe it was a success,” said David. “One attendee just did his first case using our products, choosing SIGNAFUSE and OSTEOMATRIX+ for his patient, after meeting with us at NASS and going to the event. Other existing users who came along were impressed with the content, which strengthened our brand and our relationship with them.”

In addition to the formal program, potential users mingled with Bioventus sales leaders and executives to get to know the company better. All surgeons who attended will go into Konectar, a new KOL management tool that is now also being adopted by the US Active Healing Therapies business.

“This was a big step out of our comfort zone and it was well worth it,” said David. “We are looking ahead to NASS in 2020, and taking the learnings from this program, to create an even more engaging event.”