Stefano Bini, MD Gives Us the Inside Scoop on What to Expect Next Year at DOCSF

#DOCSF18 – Meet Dr. Stefano Bini. Dr. Bini is a Professor of Clinical Orthopedics at USCF and Founder and Chair of DOCSF. Breanna wraps up the conference with Dr. Bini, highlighting some of the most memorable talks, the audience, and what we can expect next year from DOCSF.

Transcription

Dr. Stefano Bini: We have each a … wonderful.
Well, thanks for that. I [inaudible 00:00:04] I’m glad you liked it. I think the general energy around the event has been very positive. People seem to really enjoy it. [inaudible 00:00:16].

Bre Cunningham: Everyone’s in a party mode.

Dr. Bini: Everyone’s in a party mode. Keep them going. I don’t want to ruin that; that vibe. Look. The major strategy around conferences, look at how you did last year, look at our areas of opportunity. What fell flat? What didn’t work out so well? And replace it with new ideas and [inaudible 00:00:35] not quite alpha-beta testing, but just really try it out. This year we added the fireside chat. We really tried to keep the lectures down to a minimum. Nothing was more than 10 minutes. These are folks that can certainly give an hour talk for the most part, but I asked them to really give short, specific talks. The framing was very similar last year, just we added a few things. We took out some of our projects.

As always, we tried to find somebody to give the keynote from outside our industry, but whose work speaks to our work. I know you interviewed Topher [Galord 00:01:09] from Under Armor who gave this outstanding talk. For those of you who are watching and haven’t seen Topher, it was an interview, or the talk. I highly recommend it. It was inspirational and his perspective on their … they’re providing their customers with physical armor, emotional armor, and information armor was such a great way to frame the issue, because for us, as clinicians, taking care of injured people, it’s not that different from an athlete who trains for an event.

The event itself is an injury to the body and has to recover. Well, it’s very similar to what we do in healthcare where we’re dealing with people who are injured, need to have an event or an injured as a procedure, or treatment and then has to recover. How do we provide them the emotional armor? How do we provide them the informational armor? [inaudible 00:01:56] physical armor? Think that those metaphors really rang well with me and I thought that was a very good way of doing it.

Then, lastly, we really spent a lot of time curating our … not only the speakers, but the audience. We have … I was so proud of the folks that came to this event. The quality, the caliber, the level, the brain trust that we had in the room was pretty impressive. I think, you know we’re at JP Morgan, so these people [inaudible 00:02:24] here, but we actually managed to have them come in.

Bre Cunningham: As a member of the audience, I learned things today that I didn’t think existed or were even possible, that seemed an exotic concept, but that people are actually doing. And you made a comment saying, “Who else needs to be here?”, and I have a Rolodex in my head of people that I know, that I work with in the industry, my bosses’ bosses, that need to come here and see that AI is the future and that it’s good.
How are you going to expand this concept? You made a big announcement earlier about the future of DOCSF and where you’re going with it.

Dr. Bini: So, DOCSF really focuses on the digital or the [inaudible 00:03:07]. What does that mean? That means the delivery of care model, how do we deliver cares: is it tele-office, is it AI, is it VR? Is it delivery model? Well, we have not been able to get into … Because it’s not really in this focus space, is the whole area of biotech, regenerative medicine, all the biologics, and outside the doors here, there are a lot of people who are going to be talking about biology, biotechs, et cetera. So how do we bring that into DOCSF without impinging on what is really a digital space? We wanna create ROCSF, the Regenerative Orthopedic Conference, which will be all day Saturday, so it will be preceding the DOCSF conference, the digital conference on Sunday, so Saturday, we do regenerative, and Sunday we do digital.
The focus of the regenerative conference is gonna be to look at biological product. It could be 3D biologic printing. It could be regenerative tissue, surgery, that kind of stuff, or DNA stuff … All that kind of stuff that needs to be brought into the clinical space, but it’s in a lab, so how do we talk about improving the slow of new ideas in the lab and bring them out into the clinical space. So that’s what ROCSF is gonna be about. Anyway, DOCSF, ROCSF, so we’ll be able to now have a global picture of the future of orthopedics as it applies to the delivery model and what we’re actually delivering.

Bre Cunningham: And are you doing all of this on top of your day job?

Dr. Bini: Right …

Bre Cunningham: Are you still practicing as an orthopedic surgeon?

Dr. Bini: Correct. I’m still … Yeah, still a [inaudible 00:04:46] heavily operated, like a lot, and we have lots of patients to see, and the research arm … do a lot of great research right now in digital tools and, actually, some of the greatest stuff we’re doing right now is using sensors to monitor a patient post-recovery, and we’re seeing some amazing data come out that allows to create predictive analytics, so I’m pretty excited about that.

Bre Cunningham: So, you’re in San Francisco at UCSF, you’re doing innovative things. What advice would you give to orthopedic surgeons out there that really are interested in the concept but don’t have that energy of being in the Bay Area and hearing this and seeing it to stay relevant and up to date with what’s going on and the realities of what’s coming?

Dr. Bini: You know, there’s …

Bre Cunningham: Outside of coming to the conference.

Dr. Bini: Right, no. The truth is, we’re not making it easy. So, for example within the American [inaudible 00:05:40] we are trying to develop educational modules that specifically designed to create an education pathway around … Just to bring people up to speed.

This conference is really a networking event. It’s not designed educational event. It’s a networking event. We see the network, and [inaudible 00:06:00] is for, but what we also need to create, and we’re doing it in my space of adult reconstruction, the conference we run in San Francisco, we’re adding digital health section … The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons is looking at this space.

I think the other association need to sort of wake up a little bit and spend a little more time focusing on this space. You’re absolutely right. I think we’re doing a disservice to our colleagues in primary care and orthopedic practice, cuz they’re gonna be blindsided pretty quickly by some of these technologies as they become available, and it won’t even necessarily be that it’ll be foisted on them. The patients will demand them. The truth is, how long can you not provide tele-health when they do everything else “tele-“? They’re entire world is on their phone, and you’re saying, “No, you have to come into my office”. How long will they keep coming to you if the guy next door is offering those services?

At some point, you get left behind, so we need to create those spaces. Suggestion: go to Health 2.0, go to Exponential Medicine, that’s probably the best one, or one of the best ones. There’s a number of conference on the East Coast. I think HIMSS is a little too big, but that could be a good place to go as well. And you go to a lot of conferences. Perhaps you have some ideas of where people should go.

Bre Cunningham: Well, I actually do have a suggestion, and I think that you should have a blog that is regularly updated.

Dr. Bini: Ouch.

Bre Cunningham: No, I know, I know it’s hard. Maybe just to point people in the right direction. Just short, quick, “This is going on. This is really cool. This is technology that … “. Like your friend from London. That was the most amazing story I’ve heard in so long. I think that those short stories that are easily digestible from the view of an orthopedic surgeon that’s practicing is going to really be inspirational and well followed.

Dr. Bini: So, you talking about Dan?

Bre Cunningham: Yeah.

Dr. Bini: Yeah. So, a plug for Dan’s podcast, which is just called Digital Health Today. It’s on my podcast list. Every episode that comes out, I listen to it religiously. I have almost since its inception. He has seven thousand people online that follow him. That’s only been the last three years, so we’re talking about creating a digital orthopedic podcast, leveraging some of his network, some of his knowledge and know-how and our collective contacts. He came out of the orthopedic industry. He used to work for Stryker across the pond and in the United States, and our contacts in Asia, as well, and Australia and India. So, to create an educational format that’s in a podcast format … It’s actually quite easy to go from podcast to blog, because we can simply transcribe the podcast and create a blog. Well, it was supposed to be a secret. Now it’s no longer a secret, but we’re planning to do that.

Bre Cunningham: That’s my job, though, right? To get all that intel.

Dr. Bini: Yeah, you’re good.

Bre Cunningham: So, end of the day, amazing accomplishment Doctor Bini. I’m just so proud of you and this organization, this conference.

Dr. Bini: Oh, thank you.

Bre Cunningham: And what you pulled off. I think I can speak for all the attendees of the conference that as a doctor, we’re going to be here to support this. Everyone in this room goes to a lot of conferences, and … High quality, awesome, and we’re on the bandwagon, so anything that we can do to help, all the attendees would just be so glad to support.

Dr. Bini: Oh well, thank you. Well, listen, CODE Technology has been a huge supporter of our conference from day one. You’ve been a believer. You got it, you saw it. You helped us with all these things. That’s awesome.

Bre Cunningham: Yeah.

Dr. Bini: Thank you.

Bre Cunningham: Can’t wait to bring more bosses next year.

Dr. Bini: There you go.

Bre Cunningham: Cheers.

Dr. Bini: Cheers.

Bre Cunningham: Congratulations.