Stryker CFO: 3-D printing an ‘area of focus’ for new, innovative products

During a question and answer section in a conference call on Jan. 26, Stryker chief financial officer, William R. Jellison, noted the company will focus on creating new and innovative products that involve 3-D printing.

“For the foreseeable future, at least the next 3 [years] or 4 years, our focus is on innovative new products and not replacing our existing products with 3-D printed products,” Jellison said. “The pipeline of innovative new geometries that cannot be made without 3-D printing is the area of focus, so it is not about trying to replace our products and drive down costs over time. Ten years from now that could be the case, but in the near to midterm, it is focused on innovative new products.”

Jellison noted that during the past few years Stryker has launched several 3-D printed products, including tibial base plates to enable cementless knees, revision cones and a patella offering, and will soon launch a 3-D printed titanium interbody device for the spine.

“All the products we have launched thus far that are 3-D printed are all innovative new products,” Jellison said. “In the case of the spine product and the cementless product, it allows for bony ingrowth because they are porous materials and [we are] getting very good feedback from our customers.”

Kevin A. Lobo, chair and chief executive officer of Stryker, noted the impacts 3-D printing have had on the knee and spine divisions of the company, and mentioned the company has ideas and prototypes of 3-D printed titanium products for other divisions.

“With robotics and 3-D printing we believe we have the lead on both of those areas, and those are things we can talk about that differentiate us from our competition,” Lobo said during the conference call. “[Over] time, I expect robotics and 3-D printing to take on a more important portion of our overall sales, and they will be sustainable and sticky if we have something the competition does not have.”

Reference: