Jay Farris Joins SBi

A focus on sales and safety…Small Bone Innovations, Inc. (SBi) has announced that Jack ‘Jay’ Farris, a 20-year veteran of medical device and health care product sales, service and marketing, has joined the company as National Sales Director, North America.

Farris, who helped to transform manufacturer sales strategies to hospital ‘C-suite’ executives and effect a transition from single-use to the more cost effective reprocessing of medical devices, will report to Anthony G. Viscogliosi, SBi Chairman & Chief Executive Officer. He will have direct responsibility for sales of the company’s SB&J portfolio in North America, including its market leading STAR total ankle replacement system.

“Jay pioneered a strategy and developed a team at Alliance Medical and its successor companies that helped spur rapid sales growth among hospital purchasing authorities. His experience and drive will be invaluable in building SBi’s sales organization as we enter the next phase of the STAR ankle program and consolidate our market leadership in upper and lower limb technologies, ” Viscogliosi said in the July 6, 2011 news release.

Farris added: “I have followed the impressive trajectory of SBi’s growth and leadership in the SB&J market, led by the remarkable STAR ankle technology. There are many parallels between the development of medical device reprocessing and total ankle arthroplasty. For example, the need to persuade Chief Safety Officers, as well as other decision-makers in the hospital purchasing chain of command, to appreciate STAR’s cost effectiveness and safety features versus fusion in treating a complex disease such as ankle arthritis.”

Earlier in his career, Farris held senior sales positions with Paragon Healthcare Corp., a device reprocessing company and the surgical services company, Medical Alliance Inc., where he began to establish extensive links with hospitals, surgeons and other health care providers in North America.

Farris told OTW,

When the industry first began to raise the issue of reprocessing devices, such as catheters, endo-mechanical and orthopedic devices, we hit a brick wall. We went ahead–led by visionaries such as Tony Viscogliosi–and through a specifically designed Roadmap and AIM process, began working closely with major hospitals and IDNs such as the Mayo Clinic that ended up supporting the concept of reprocessing. It became clear that –if anything–reprocessing devices was not only cost effective but there were safety benefits due to extensive FDA regulation, as well as significant reductions in landfill waste. It has taken a decade to convince surgeons, hospitals and the FDA that total ankle replacement, when correctly prescribed, will be superior to fusion. Like device reprocessing, it takes volumes of scientific data to displace a Gold Standard procedure but in the case of the STAR ankle, the FDA (via the PMA process) and even the health insurance industry, is behind it. In a nutshell, this is why I joined SBi.