50 Years of Medtech Policy and Industry Impact via AdvaMed

In this episode of Medtech Snapshot Podcast we're joined by Ray Briscuso, Executive Vice President of AdvaMed, who walks us through AdvaMed's 50 year story supporting the medical device industry and why it's critical to get engaged with organizations such as theirs to support the industry.

In concert with AdvaMed's 50th anniversary, they're hosting their annual 'Medtech Conference' in San Diego, CA Oct 5th-8th. For details visit https://lnkd.in/djbH_24

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Read the Full Interview

Welcome back to another MedTech Snapshot. The one question, one answer, highly digest medical device podcast. With me today is Ray Biscuso.

He is the executive vice president of events for AVIMED. We're going to be getting into a variety of topics today covering why would you want to get involved in some of these events? Perhaps, of course, we'll be talking about AVIMED, but why also just being involved in the industry at large as well? There's also a rather large conference coming up later this year, so we'll dive into some of those details. So stay tuned.

All right, Ray, well, welcome in. So I'm really looking forward to diving into just kind of where AVIMED is today. You know, and you all have been through a variety of changes.

I mean, 50 years is quite a long time for a trade association to be around. So can you maybe just walk us through, you know, the pathway to get to where you are today? And why people should consider getting involved with your organization? So yes, we're celebrating 50 years. We were founded back in 1974.

And we were created because industry was all of a sudden regulated by the FDA. And we were started by companies that actually had products on the market. And you had to have a product on the market in those early days.

And it was really just the big guys that joined. And it was a closed network. But we are the world's largest trade organization.

We have a global footprint. Our members include, I want to say all 10 of the 10 largest medical device companies are members of ours. I think 35 of the 40 largest.

But what we've transformed ourselves from was a industry of just products that already were on the market to the innovators. And now our membership is 620 people strong. 450 of those are early stage companies, many of which have not yet had a product approved.
Many have a product approved in maybe one market. And so we bring everyone together under one voice. And today, what are we busy with? We're busy with everything.
We're busy with addressing tariffs, trying to get breakthrough products covered, trying to get products reimbursed, staying up with the current trends, everything from AI, you name it. It's one place. It's a co-op though.
It's not a for-profit. We are owned by the medical device manufacturers. And that's our board of directors.
So it's for industry by industry, and we're the world's largest, and it's an exciting industry to be a part of. And now you all are located in Washington, D.C., but from an events perspective, you have a pretty large footprint. Can you comment on that real quick? Sure.
So we do an awful lot of education and training. If there's a new policy at FDA or something changes to CMS or something. So we do programs in various places.
A lot of them are virtual. But we have one very large annual industry event that we try to take to one of the centers of the industry. So we'll go to Boston.
We were in Toronto. We've been in Chicago. We've been in Philadelphia.
This year, we'll be in San Diego. So we'll be a hotbed of Southern California with Irvine through San Diego. And we also attract the entire scope of industry.
I mean, I say the ecosystem. Investors, patient advocates, not just manufacturers, regulators, they all come, 4,000 people, 45 countries. Everyone comes together once a year.
This year, the main events in San Diego.