Lehigh Valley Rising | Lehigh Valley Rising S2 Ep2 Business of Medical Technology | Season 2022 | Ep

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This is Lehigh Valley Rising.

BSI Corporate Benefits is a proud supporter of Lehigh Valley Rising.

Additional support provided by St Luke's University Health Network.

- It's a safe bet that you or someone you know had their life improved or even saved by a piece of medical technology that was either manufactured or invented right here in the Lehigh Valley.

Maybe it was a COVID test or a piece of surgical equipment that helped get you back on your feet.

Or a tiny camera that made sure your surgery went as planned.

On this edition of Lehigh Valley Rising, we'll meet the folks right here in our own back yard whose inventions are saving lives around the world.

Our first story focuses on Olympus.

You might think of them as a camera company, but they've been in the medical device business for over 100 years, and they're still helping us see the incredible.

- Olympus was founded in 1919 as a local distributor of microscopes 0 very humble roots in Japan.

In 1936, we came out with our first camera, and, to this day, many people will know Olympus as a camera manufacturer.

- Not only is the 35 millimeter Olympus Infinity totally auto-focus, auto-quick flash, auto-everything, it's also... ..totally weatherproof.

- We were always known for cameras, but especially our professional grade cameras.

In 1950, Olympus introduced the first gastro camera.

And this technology was revolutionary because it provided for the first time physicians a way to see inside the body.

With that introduction came many more, and Olympus has become a medical device leader.

- Our scopes definitely have a huge impact on so many people, with colorectal cancer screening.

Everyone has to get screened.

So... My favorite part about working at Olympus is definitely the people.

The people make up the place.

- I'm Louis Mariani with Olympus.

I've been here for ten years.

I am one of the senior technical trainers here at Olympus, so I handle a lot of the new hires for the service organization.

I also get involved in sales training, work a lot with our marketing teams as well.

I am product based, so I handle anything under our CDS platform, which is cleaning, disinfection and sterilization.

And so we're going to take our sponge, we're going to have it in our detergent, and we're basically going to clean the entire outside of this endoscope.

There are so many different opportunities within the organization, within the company, that they encourage you to find your passion within the company.

- Olympus is a company that allows you to act on your ideas.

- CAN stands for Colleague Affinity Network.

This is basically an employee resource group.

You have a veterans' CAN, we have a women's CAN, Hispanic-Latino.

We have interfaith CANs.

We have ten CANS in total.

It all makes a difference here.

We've seen things like just the doors on the bathrooms of our building be loosened because they're a little too heavy for someone who's in a wheelchair.

- What I appreciated about Olympus is that we're not just talking about a solution, but we're acting on it.

- It's cool to see that Olympus really values that and takes the feedback from employees and our CANs and really puts it into action.

- Many of us are aware now because of PR, because of campaigns, about the importance of being screened for things like breast cancer and colon cancer.

What people are not as familiar with is the importance of being screened for lung cancer.

Lung cancer is the third most common kind of cancer, and it is the deadliest form of cancer.

Think about your lungs as being kind of the trees of your body.

Your trachea is then splitting off into two bronchial tubes.

Think about that as the first big branches of a tree.

And then from there it's splitting into four and then eight, and then hundreds of little, little airways, ultimately ending in alveoli.

And think about that as the leaves of a tree.

So, in your lungs, there is so much real estate to get to.

And what we do with bronchoscopy is we allow a physician to use a bronchoscope, which is a thin, flexible tube, to get as far out into those branches as possible.

The goal here is to make them smaller so that we can access those smallest of airways, but to never compromise on the quality of the picture.

I've worked at Olympus for more than 16 years.

If I think through our whole portfolio, there are many, many products that I'm just amazed by.

There's one in particular that I want to share with the viewers, and that's called the Spiration Valve.

This little valve can be inserted into a patient's lungs, a patient that's suffering from emphysema specifically.

And what it does is, once put in, in a procedure that takes less than 30 minutes, it allows a patient to get up and breathe again.

That, to me, is life-changing.

- And I think one of the most fascinating products that we have is called the Orbeye.

It's a video microscope, a 3D technology that surgeons will use over someone's brain during brain surgery.

And it allows them to be a little bit more ergonomic and stand up and complete the surgery in a more comfortable way than having to lean over the actual patient during the surgery for possibly up to 18 hours.

- I am working with products that are saving lives.

And that to me is a reason to get up every day and do what I do.

And I love that.

- I love Olympus.

I love the people.

I have faith in the leadership.

I think we are going in the absolute right direction, and making a difference in a patient's life gives me a lot of happiness and pleasure.

- Tyber Medical's orthopedic products have been used by doctors and patients around the world.

Tyber Medical draws its workforce from the vast array of skilled talent that exists here in the Valley.

But there's more to Tyber than just life-saving devices.

They've also fostered a workplace culture that promotes working hard and playing hard.

- We're a medical device manufacturer.

We develop and design orthopedic products.

Our products are sold throughout the world.

We have products distributed in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, soon to be China, all throughout the European Union and also in the United States.

At Tyber Medical today, what we're changing is how orthopedic products get to the market.

The Lehigh Valley is really a central area for us.

- The diversity is off of the charts here.

The skilled labor force, from engineers to manufacturing schools, to these vo-tech programs within high schools is phenomenal.

- I am pinning Concorde Peak parts.

They are spinal implants.

They show the surgeons exactly where the piece is, like on an X-ray.

It helps detect them very precisely where they are.

- We also develop trauma devices.

So this is bone screws, bone plates.

- These are our Fanuc five-axis robodrills.

These are used right now for our foot and ankle plating system to make these different plates that can go onto different parts of the foot and ankle.

- We focus on spinal applications, trauma, and really the distal extremities.

We're getting ready to roll out here fairly soon products for foot and ankle surgeries.

- We work in tandem with the development team, so we source everything from the raw material specifications all the way through managing the production and planning.

Fell in love with the industry, fell in love with all the outcomes improving people's lives, and never want to leave.

- I'm a chemical engineer.

I went to the University of Colorado and it was there that for my graduate work I started doing a lot of research in shape memory materials, and as we looked at materials, we found different applications that they could be used in, one of which was orthopedic devices.

I'm waiting for the day that a family member hopefully never needs my product, but if they need a product, they get it.

- One, two, three.

- The company was founded in 2012 over in Moorestown, New Jersey.

And as we were looking at expanding, we worked with the state of Pennsylvania to relocate Tyber Medical's headquarters to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and that was in 2015.

And we've really expanded to the point where we've invested about $15 million in the infrastructure that we have here in our Bethlehem headquarters.

- Every position has a road map to make it to a higher level position before you even start.

- Jeff Tyber actually came to my PhD thesis defense and used that almost as a job interview and hired me.

My role here has grown exponentially.

I've been encouraged to step in and kind of lead the drive from a scientific perspective.

- I believe that everybody comes in Monday morning with a sense of purpose.

It's all about I'm excited to be back at work.

- For us, our attitude is work hard, play hard, and we sure know how to celebrate.

- We've had hot dog eating competitions.

We rented out an entire movie theater to see Star Wars with custom-made lightsabers, a golf scramble, tricky tray events.

We've had a company-wide trivia night on site.

We did a talent show in Bethlehem.

- My arm is stiff.

I can't reach the back of my head to scratch it.

Now, the only thing I can think of to be able to fix that is to...

I can do this too!

- We just have a phenomenal culture and team here, that they just do the right thing all the time.

It really comes down to having a culture where you can speak your mind, you can challenge things and you're trusted and it's welcomed.

- If you care and you want to have fun and you believe you're just looking for an opportunity, this is the place to be.

- Every Lehigh Valley resident knows that the Bethlehem Steel Plant produced the steel and the armaments for the warships that helped the US and its allies win World War II.

And it all happened right here in the heart of South Bethlehem.

70 years later, a medical testing company operates on the same site which was so crucial to that victory.

This company now stands on the front lines as the world wages a war against a formidable 21st-century threat.

COVID-19.

- OraSure has its roots in Lehigh Valley.

- Founded in 1987 out of the Ben Franklin Technology Partners Innovation Incubator at Lehigh University.

- And they were able to really build the company from there.

- OraSure set out to make at-home diagnostic testing that's very easy to use.

Started with hepatitis C testing, moved to HIV at-home testing.

- OraSure was the first at-home HIV test.

- And then ultimately an Ebola test that can be used in the field.

- Thinking about blood draws or saliva samples and things like that that have to go to labs, our tests are immediate.

- Maybe they're scared to go to their physician.

Maybe they're scared to know the answer.

At-home testing really enables people to address the best health care that they need to have, and our people are aligned around that mission.

- Of our over 800 employees in OraSure, almost 500 of them are based here in the Lehigh Valley.

- Engineers, scientists, manufacturing, salespeople, marketing people, HR people.

- We have all of our support functions like IT and finance.

- It was busy, I mean, very busy in the hallways, very busy in meetings.

- And then COVID hit.

- Governor Tom Wolf ordered that all non-essential businesses across Pennsylvania must close by midnight tonight.

- Effective at midnight, all non-essential stores are to close in Pennsylvania.

- I remember this specifically to the date.

It was actually the day before I think the world shut down.

And I was walking through our hallways with our head of R&D and we were monitoring COVID very closely just from our employee perspective for the past couple of weeks and what we needed to do.

And I remember saying to him, Do you think we're going to get into this game?

And literally the next day is when COVID shut down the world.

- So please stay home.

- Everyone went home.

Our employees went home.

We didn't know what to do.

And that was the day we said, OK, guys, it's time.

It's time for us to really start thinking about creating a test and how long and how can we do this as quick as possible.

- And it meant that we had to completely pivot to a hybrid environment, but with also our core teams here in Bethlehem in our facilities.

- Everybody was reaching out to us.

Anybody who had an essential workforce really needed the COVID testing.

And we also said, as we're beginning to develop this COVID test, we need our R&D people here, we need our engineering people here.

And so we determined what that looked like, what shifts people could come in to make sure that they're safe, what the protocols were.

- We had to really think about a manufacturing environment that was safe and safe for our employees while also making really critical health care tests to serve in the pandemic.

- So we already had lateral flow technology.

I mean, we're a lateral flow technology company with HIV tests, Ebola tests and HCV tests on the market.

So the real question came, is how could we modify our science and our technology to service the needs for COVID testing for the public?

- Everybody was looking for tests and no-one had them.

We were making as much as we could, as fast as we could, and delivering to whoever we could.

- The inteliSwab.

It's a great device, just so much easier, because you take it out of the pouch, you actually use the test itself, the collection pad on the end, to collect the sample in your nose.

And then you stick the collection pad in the device right into an easy to open vial of developer solution, essentially.

And you wait 30 minutes and you get a result.

- I can't tell you enough how amazing our employees were.

When we think about the work that we had to do and planning that work, they stepped up to the plate in every way possible.

They made sure that they were coming in safe.

They made sure that they isolated themselves when they were at home and they weren't infecting their friends and families.

- Because all of our COVID manufacturing is here, so we've been ramping up our COVID 19 manufacturing and have a massive new facility, over 200,000 square feet, in Bethlehem Township, which opened on October 3rd.

- It is a brand-new facility.

We call it our super factory.

- We have launched state of the art automation and will continue to translate that automation to the rest of our portfolio.

So it won't just benefit COVID-19, but also our HIV testing, our Hep C testing and well beyond that.

- One of the exciting things is our employees are so thrilled to be able to have a pandemic responsibility and be able to be there to create larger volumes of product.

- It's really about clean, state of the art health care manufacturing and innovation that is powering both the US and the world.

Our history of innovation that's right here in the Lehigh Valley.

Now we have a new legacy of innovation we're building in health care.

It is something that the Valley is sharing with the world.

- Every summer, PBS39 hosts Production U, an immersive TV production course for high schoolers.

This year, the kids got the chance to produce a story about another very cool piece of medical technology, St Luke's medical simulator truck.

So, without further ado, here's the world broadcast premiere of a story about the next generation of medical training produced by the next generation of media makers.

- St Luke's University Health Network has a mobile simulation truck.

The simulator, at its core...

They've been around for a number of years.

So this type of simulator that is purposely put on the truck has heart sounds, lung sounds, bowel sounds, anterior, posterior.

It can breathe, sweat, cry.

With this particular simulator, you can either use some pre-recorded sounds and talk through the simulator, or you can use your own voice and talk through the simulator.

- Right in the middle of my chest.

It's like an eight out of ten, I would say, crushing pain.

- Our sim truck is a simulation room on wheels.

A fun titbit about it is, I guess, it can also be used as an ambulance in emergency situations.

It could transfer patients.

But ideally we just use it for education.

Everything that you need medically, equipment-wise, is in the truck.

- So if we were to do a simulation on the truck, we will tell them some brief information about that patient.

- Your patient here is Carl Sebring.

He's a 54-year-old male.

His chief complaint is of chest pain that started about an hour ago.

- So the way the truck layout is, it's very similar to an ambulance.

There are back doors that open up, which is normally how a patient is brought into an ambulance.

So similarly, sim man is laying in a stretcher, so he's right in the center so that the learners can surround him on both sides.

On both ends of the truck is a big screen that shows vital signs, which is a really important part of a patient assessment.

What we try to do with simulation is kind of take that concept away and say, Hey, you can practice some of these scenarios before you have to be thrown into it and there's a real patient involved.

We want them to make those mistakes and second-guess themselves so that they create habits and train, if you will.

- Eight, nine, ten.

we will then do what we call a debrief.

Sometimes people think that the simulation is important, and it is.

But what's more important, or just as important as the simulation is that debrief.

During that debrief with the learners, we talk about what they did well, what they could do differently and what they could do better.

I think it was a little confusing just because we're not used to looking at your monitor, but I think once we kind of got the hang of that, it worked out really well.

- Our goal is to make it as realistic as possible to simulate that learning environment.

We don't want mistakes, but we expect mistakes.

And if mistakes are going to happen, then they have the ability to happen in this environment, right?

Because no harm is going to be done to the patients that we're using.

- What we did before high-fidelity simulators... Wasn't that just like a fun time in nursing?

That's probably back when I was in school.

You had a tissue box that was pretending to be a patient and you were just like sticking it with stuff.

I'm thoroughly impressed every time I see a new high-fidelity mannequin with the technology that's involved.

And I think for our network to be able to incorporate that technology and help us elevate our simulations and use that to additionally train our staff is really impressive, to be honest.

- Simulation has ended.

- Julien Sauvagnargues was named CEO of Olympus of the Americas at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our producer, Andy Hicks, recently sat down with him to discuss how he and his employees rose to the challenge, how his company's technology is saving lives, and what the future holds for Olympus.

- Well, Julien, thank you so much for joining us today.

- Happy to have you.

Welcome.

- Thank you.

You arrived during the pandemic, correct, as CEO?

What was that like?

What was that experience like?

- Yeah, that's a good question.

And it was interesting time.

So to your point, I was appointed in this position in April 2020.

So a very interesting time to take over such a position, because you start dealing with things nobody had dealt with before and you have to make decisions very quickly.

I think I've been very lucky because we had the technology.

We have a work from home policy, which is anterior to the pandemic.

So we were ready.

We had the tools for our people to work from home instead of coming to the office.

So that was a very, very important part.

As well, I was lucky to have a good team around me and we quickly decided that we would have to focus on mostly three things - the safety of our employees, the safety of the jobs of our employees, and obviously the service to our customers, who are mostly hospitals and who are obviously doing an essential job in the society.

And obviously, you know, working from home was a way for us to let our people be safer.

Right?

Not coming to the office during the peak of a pandemic.

But you have to imagine that we have repair centers, we have manufacturing facilities where there was no choice.

People had to come to their facility and working place every day and we had to find solution there.

So we were, for example, one of the first company using a traceability device which were helping us to make sure that if somebody was positive, there was no cross-contamination in the facility.

One thing we always ask people is, how important the Lehigh Valley itself is to the success of your business in terms of the people, in terms of the work ethic, in terms of the location?

Why is Lehigh Valley a great place for Olympus?

- Well, I think you just said it, right.

I think you just said it - because of the people.

So you spoke about the work ethic.

It's one thing I mentioned in informal discussions, and I'm going to insist on that.

That's key here.

And the second one, I think, around the people is the talent pool we have here.

Right?

I mean, we know we have great education in the Valley.

And for us, it's key because a lot of the people working here in this facility have a college or university degree.

And so most of them come from the Lehigh Valley universities or colleges.

And so that's key for us, to be able to tap into this world-class talent pool.

I think the second thing is the location is great for us.

It has been great from the beginning, but also it's very convenient, you know, from a distribution perspective and warehousing perspective.

I really need to mention that we don't only have this here headquarter in the Valley, we also have our main distribution center located in Breinigsville, not far from here.

And this is where, you know, from where we distribute most of our products in the Americas.

So the location is key for us.

And you know, this is a growing area, right?

Very dynamic from an economic perspective.

It's helping us and it's also helping, I think, the quality of life our employees can have here, which is, I guess, a key part.

- I think that's absolutely a key part.

Speaking of quality of life, you said that you love tennis.

- Yes.

- You love music.

- Yes.

- How good is your game?

- Well, I was not that bad.

My game is not getting better.

I think it's age.

So I play a little bit less than before.

Now, my kids are playing.

I have two daughters.

They are 15 and 12.

And they like tennis as well.

So it's becoming more a family activity than it was.

And speaking of music, I do like music a lot, mostly the rock from the '90s.

- Favorite album?

- Well, I would say T99 from Belgium.

- Good stuff.

- Yeah.

There is also a French group I like very much called Noir Desir, but nobody knows them.

So I'm going to stick with Belgium.

- No, absolutely.

You should promote them.

I mean, honestly, it's a business show.

If you want to promote your favorite band, please do.

So everyone go listen to... - Noir Desir.

They don't exist anymore, but you can find them on Spotify or Apple Music or anywhere.

- Perfect.

All right.

Well, Julien, thank you so very much for speaking with us today on Lehigh Valley Rising.

- This was great.

- Absolutely.

My pleasure, Andy.

Very nice to meet you.

- Well, that's our show.

Thanks so much for joining us.

You can catch this episode and more online at PBS39.org, or on your PBS app.

From all of us at Lehigh Valley Rising, I'm Grover Silcox.

See you next time.

- BSI Corporate Benefits is a proud supporter of Lehigh Valley Rising.

Additional support provided by St Luke's University Health Network.

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