How do you demonstrate the value of a product that works at the microscopic level?
That is the question Ethicon’s PLUS suture team faced. Pictures and videos can only do so much, which is why the team has pushed their marketing and education to the next level by partnering with XVIVO to take their customers on a virtual journey inside a surgical wound to explore and witness clinically how PLUS technology works.
PLUS sutures are coated with triclosan to help prevent surgical site infection (SSI). However, fifteen years after the launch of PLUS sutures, some key markets are still under-penetrated. There is also minimal global awareness about the new clinical and economic data and research that demonstrate the important contribution PLUS technology makes in lowering the risk of SSIs.
For more than a decade, the value of PLUS technology has been displayed through an image that shows bacteria in a petri dish unable to colonize a triclosan-coated suture. Although it is easy to understand, a static image carries limited impact.
How Ethicon worked with XVIVO to drive adoption of the PLUS platform
To drive the adoption of the PLUS platform – which is a strategic priority for Ethicon’s Wound Closure & Healing team – the PLUS suture team tested the use of virtual immersion to improve the impact and awareness of PLUS technology by finding an innovative way to show what is happening when PLUS is at work.
A cross-functional Ethicon team of Marketing (Hideaki Doda, Mahmoud Okasha, Courtney McShane, Nicholas Carlascio), R&D (John Collier, Stephen J. Rothenburger, Davide Miksa), and Medial Affairs (Dr. Liza Ovington) worked in conjunction with us, to develop a three-and-a-half-minute cinematic virtual reality experience to demonstrate the mechanism of action for PLUS suture technology. Using virtual reality, viewers enter a surgical wound and take their place between two layers of connective tissues.
In VR, the surgeon is shrunken down to a micro level. This gives them a bacteria-eyed-view of how biofilm attaches a standard suture. Then, from this same vantage point they see how PLUS technology inhibits common SSI-associated organisms from colonizing the PLUS suture.
Hideaki Doda, Sr. Marketing Manager – Wound Closure & Healing, Global Strategic Marketing, states, “When you have the virtual reality headset on, you are watching the suture coming at you and seeing what happens with every throw of the needle, pass after pass. It puts you in a different perspective. After three and a half minutes of this immersion, we are hearing viewers ask, ‘Are we using this technology? If not, we need to have a conversation.’” The virtual reality experience has already generated multiple discussions with customers and requests for code changes in ortho, gynecological, and colorectal specialties.
The Power of Virtual Reality
The unique nature of the virtual reality experience stands out from other types of scientific communications about surgical products. It appeals to a wider audience across the risk management spectrum, including general physicians, materials managers, operating room nurses, and surgeons/specialists. The PLUS suture team plans to use virtual reality immersion at customer meetings, professional education events, and society meetings and conventions.
Success!
With the success of this initiative for the PLUS suture technology, there are already plans to create additional virtual reality experiences in the Advanced Wound Closure & Healing STRATAFIX Portfolio and Dermabond PRINEO. Sheri Tingom, Manager of Professional Education, Academic Health Systems, affirms, “Introducing virtual reality into our educational programs at key US academic institutions has created excitement while increasing awareness of PLUS technology in a quick and effective way. Impressed by this immersion, many HCPs are now requesting product as well as a total system SSI reduction initiative.”