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Extremity Medical, LLC |
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May 25, 2015 Issue |
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The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
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Fixation and Fusion Products for Distal Extremities |
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Chairman & CEO
Extremity Medical, LLC
Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – May 25, 2015
CEOCFO: Mr. Lyons, what is the idea behind Extremity Medical? Mr. Lyons: Extremity Medical is a company focused on what we like to call the distal extremities; foot and ankle and hand and wrist in the orthopedics implant market. We are predominately in the area of fixation and fusion for those two areas of the anatomy. Our expectation is to develop a portfolio of products that deliver novel solutions, as well as solutions that may be more common, thereby giving the orthopedic surgeon a full solution of fixation and fusion products for the distal extremities.
CEOCFO: How closely related are the foot and ankle with the hand and wrist? Mr. Lyons: They are very different when focusing on the surgeon who services those areas. The hand surgeon is very different from the foot and ankle surgeon. However, the anatomy in terms of anatomical shapes and sizes are very similar. Many of the engineering principles we would apply to implants for the foot and ankle, in terms of size, shape and exposure, are similar concepts to those that we would apply to the upper extremities, because much of the same anatomical shapes and geometries of the bones in the hands and feet are similar. However, on the business side, the training of a hand surgeon is very different than that of a foot/ankle surgeon.
CEOCFO: How do you decide what to tackle? Mr. Lyons: We always look to develop product based upon the needs of the surgeons. Therefore, we take a great deal of direction from what surgeons say out in the marketplace. Most times we consider two key features when looking for an area to develop. One is for an unmet need, which generally means that there is not an adequate solution for a particular surgical procedure. A good example in the lower extremity is the mid-foot fusions, in the upper extremity in the carpal bones. Most times that is our motivation to develop products. The second would be market opportunity. If there is segment in the lower extremity that has a high procedural volume, this is typically an area that a surgeon is going to have to service and likewise, if we want to be a company that services that surgeon, we have to have the products he would commonly require. Extremity Medical might supply innovative solutions for unmet needs, and if those unmet needs markets do not overlap with high volume market segments, you have to offer products in the high volume markets as well. When a surgeon calls upon a company to service them for different surgical needs, they can call on one company, i.e., Extremity Medical, to supply those needs.
CEOCFO: In the product areas that are more common, why would a surgeon want an Extremity Medical product as opposed to a competitor? Mr. Lyons: Many times the extremities market requires multiple implants for a single procedure. We find that a single procedure may have a portion of the procedure that requires a novel implant and a common implant to address another issue in the procedure. It is not uncommon to see an x-ray of a patient with multiple implants solving a single problem. Many times if a surgeon uses an Extremity Medical novel product, he or she will request if Extremity Medical has the more common product. If we do not, he will call upon a competitor company. If we do, he will likely want to use ours instead, rather than call in another company. Thereby giving him the convenience and giving Extremity Medial a broader, more successful business.
CEOCFO: Does the patient care that there are many pieces to an orthopedic surgery or just want to get it done correctly? Mr. Lyons: Not all orthopedic procedures have multiple implants. For example, in a hip implant, a total hip would almost always, only be an implant from a single company. However, in the area of extremities, where the anatomy requires different implants that deliver different purposes for a single procedure, it is not uncommon for a company to produce an implant for that is good for one segment of the procedure and another company to produce something for another part of the procedure. I do not think that it is bad to have implants coming from two different companies. I think that it makes life easier, economics more efficient and ultimately, the patient gets the better solution.
CEOCFO: Would you tell us about the product of which you are most proud? Mr. Lyons: The product that we are most proud of at Extremity Medical is what we call, IO FIX. The IO stand for “Intraosseous” and fix is for “fixation”. This product platform represents the core product family of Extremity Medical. It is a platform that we developed to serve not only the foot and ankle market, but also the hand and wrist market. It is a novel patented assembly of two implants that deliver excellent clinical results and superior biomechanics compared to the competition. They provide fixation for the mid-foot and fixation for the carpals. They provide the better solution in comparison to the competition, by having zero profile, which is important in the extremity space. They also provide significantly more compression at the joint space to be fused over competitive products. In some cases offer earlier weight bearing capabilities due to the fact that the biomechanics of the implant are stronger and deliver more compression than their competitive counterparts.
CEOCFO: How are you able to make them stronger? Mr. Lyons: It is primarily due to the construction of the implants; how they come together uniquely and how they lock together uniquely and that they enter the anatomy through this concept that we call, interosseous fixation.
CEOCFO: With recalls being a common news item lately, how do you ensure the viability of your products? Mr. Lyons: First, Extremity Medical employs a highly skilled set of individuals that are experience and have the technical capabilities and regulatory backgrounds necessary to ensure the designs and procedures that produce the designs, meet all of the requirements. In addition to that, our robust, in-house quality systems inspect product to meet all regulatory requirements. These controls are associated with the manufacturer of the part, and then are followed up by a comprehensive product surveillance system. When the product enters into the marketplace and ultimately into a patient, those products are tracked by serialization and allow us to evaluate any product issues in the market, where a patient may find dissatisfaction with the implant. Not due to some defective purpose, but more due to the simple reality that one patient’s healing may differ from another patient. Sometimes the implant cannot always solve that problem for that particular patient. We track all of those types of conditions and with this said, IO FIX, has over 10,000 successful implants. Our in-house data has shown the long term survival of the implant.
CEOCFO: What is your global reach today? Mr. Lyons: Currently we are in over twenty five countries around the world, mostly in Europe, some parts of South America, and in some areas of Asia and Australia.
CEOCFO: Do you anticipate reaching out into other areas? Mr. Lyons: We are always looking at new markets around the globe. However, our goals in any market, whether they are international or domestic, are to be careful and consistent in our efforts to make each market successful. This is because as a smaller expanding company, we need to ensure that as we expand, we can continue to consistently serve each market the way that we did when we only had four or five markets.
CEOCFO: What will be different a year from now at Extremity Medical? Mr. Lyons: I think Extremity Medical will be 50% larger. We are expanding quickly. Our product expansion is growing very nicely. Our ability to move outside of fixation and into joint replacement into the extremities is likely. We see a whole new opportunity in that area of the market.
CEOCFO: Why pay attention to Extremity Medical? What sets the company apart from the crowd? Mr. Lyons: What sets Extremity Medical apart from the crowd is that the products that we have developed, particularly the IO FIX core product is a product that is innovative and delivers measurable advantages, not only to the surgeons, but also most importantly to the patents. However, having said that, our ability, working with surgeons to select the products to develop quickly, is where we see our advantage. We move fast, we expand rapidly and our hope is that surgeon customers, hospitals, and even people who work in our company, see and enjoy the fact that Extremity Medical responds to them, gives them the support that they need and does it rapidly and with more attention than others. |
“We move fast, we expand rapidly and our hope is that surgeon customers, hospitals, and even people who work in our company, see and enjoy the fact that Extremity Medical responds to them, gives them the support that they need and does it rapidly and with more attention than others.” - Matthew Lyons
Extremity Medical, LLC
Contact: 973-588-8901
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Matthew
Lyons