Frost and Sullivan Executive MindXchange: Worth Your Time

After a few rounds on the conference and tradeshow circuit, one perfects a few skills: 1) sleeping while sitting upright during mind-numbing Power Point presentations, and 2) scoping out a vendor’s booth from far enough away to avoid engaging in the excruciatingly long, overzealous sales-pitch.
Neither of these will do you any good at a Frost and Sullivan event. As a major consulting firm, they specialize in actually understanding what’s useful in industry today. As such, they recognized that the major component lacking from most conferences or trade shows is the peer-level interactivity. They create events like the Medical Technologies 2006 Executive MindXchange that just wrapped up in San Francisco.
…And man, do they deliver that interactivity. The schedule is loaded with round-table discussions, best practices analysis, and peer councils at every turn (even the lunch tables have specific discussion topics assigned to them). In addition to the snore-proof sessions, the breaks between sessions are long enough to actually carry on a couple of different conversations AND drink a cup of coffee (either that or catch up on things back at the office).
While covering the executive level business news of the medical device world isn’t MedGadget’s core compentency, there were plenty of sessions that proved to be eye-opening as to the state of the industry and how that’s relevant for the emerging technologies that we focus on. Trends in FDA behavior, healthcare reimbursement and the global medical scene are all major factors as to whether that spiffy new device or imaging technology you’re working on ever makes its way into an operating room.
Other major themes seen throughout the event included the rise of outsourcing as a viable option for small companies looking to bring a new product to market, and the growing interest in direct to consumer (DTC) marketing of medical devices as patients are becoming more and more informed in guiding their own healthcare (for anyone interested, MedGadget.com can be a great way to get information out; feel free to contact us at medgadget-at-www.medgadget.com).
Finally, the after-hours events are not to be missed. Good food at local restaurants and great drinks (Napa valley wine tour sponsored by Paragon Innovations, anyone?) You haven’t truly lived until you’ve tossed back a few with some medical device engineers and marketers.
Link to Frost and Sullivan‘s Events Page