Ken Reali: New Bioventus CEO After Tony Bihl Retirement

Ken Reali, who began his career at Biomet and worked at Stryker Corporation, Smith & Nephew plc and Baxano Surgical, Inc., is the new CEO of Durham, North Carolina-based Bioventus LLC. He takes over from Tony Bihl, who retired on April 30, 2020. Reali, former president and CEO of Clinical Innovations, LLC, has also become a member of the company’s Board of Managers.

Reali currently serves on the boards of Ossio Integrative Orthopedics, AdvaMed and AdvaMed Accel and is chairman of the Ethics and Compliance Committee for AdvaMed.

William Hawkins, retired chairman and CEO of Medtronic, senior advisor to EW Healthcare and Bioventus Board Chairman, commented on Bioventus’ former CEO, noting, “Tony has been an outstanding CEO and leader of Bioventus and we will miss him, though at the same time, the Board and I are pleased to welcome Ken Reali as the incoming CEO of Bioventus. Ken’s experience in business development, driving top and bottom line growth while building a compliant culture, global product commercialization and sales of medical devices, combined with strong background in ethics and compliance, market analysis, experience as a CEO in both public and private companies is just the right fit to lead Bioventus.”

Ken Reali commented to OTW, “With a very talented team already in place, Bioventus has achieved solid above market growth over the past few years with market leading products utilized in the orthopedic office-based setting as well as an emerging surgical orthobiologics business that has recently taken significant market share. We will be reviewing our strategic direction and looking for avenues of growth that leverage our large direct commercial channel and orthobiologics platforms by pursuing both M&A [mergers and acquisitions] and R&D [research and development] opportunities. We feel we can accelerate the current organic growth of the company through these initiatives as well as improve our margins through well-defined operational focus.”

As for how he plans to lead during this COVID crisis, Reali told OTW, “Our goal is to help and assist where we can with our customers and patients while also putting the safety of our employees first. Constant and consistent communication is critical in this changing environment and the leadership team at Bioventus has done a remarkable job as we begin to reengage more directly with our customers based on location and the readiness of each individual office or hospital.”

“Bioventus has a unique position in the market as a large majority of our business is focused on conservative treatments for fracture healing and osteoarthritis and with many elective procedures being delayed our devices have been able to help patients and physicians deal with this environment in situations where surgery in the near term is not viable. The Bioventus team has remained engaged with our customers and the patients we serve through a remote and virtual environment and this has worked well particularly with a product like the Exogen ultrasound bone healing system where our team has been able to instruct patients on its proper use via virtual education and a single injection HA [hyaluronic acid] like Durolane where a patient can minimize their visit to a doctor’s office to just one time.”