US industry gets energetic proponent in new AdvaMed chief
This article was originally published in RAJ Devices
The appointment of Jim Mazzo as chairman of the board of US medtech industry association AdvaMed board is good news.
In this position1, the Abbott Medical Optics president will bring a 30-year devices business track record into play to help guide the industry through two of its most important years in terms of potential regulatory and business change.
Working with AdvaMed president Steve Ubl, Mr Mazzo can be expected to apply his customary high energy to a number of key issues. These include responding to the Institute of Medicine’s review of the Food and Drug Administration’s 510(k) medical device premarket notification process, which will result in a report in March 2011; coping with the implementation of comparative effectiveness research, which represents perhaps the major structural change for the industry in the coming years; and reacting positively in working through the industry tax and other demands of the US health reform, which President Obama now wants completed by the Easter recess in early April.
He will also be overseeing a US - and global - industry in a phase of change, as manufacturers shoulder the pressures of either keeping R&D spending high or sourcing it externally.
There is also the growing threat of the newly-emerging economies, which were once perceived as new markets, but are now seen as competitors to the “established world order”. The ongoing success of export-oriented countries – like the US and Germany for instance – will depend on how well they learn to work with the industries that are newly emerging in the BRIC (Brazil Russia, India and China) countries and beyond.
Here, the 52-year-old Chicago-born “100% Italian”, as Mr Mazzo described himself to me in interview when Advanced Medical Optics (AMO’s original name) was being spun out of Allergan, will bring into play his experience over the last two years in working to expand AdvaMed’s international committee work on the emerging markets.
As chairman of that committee, he also worked towards streamlining the medical device approval process in Japan and clarified product approval and recall provisions in China. This will stand him in good stead for another of his tasks as the chairman: supporting global regulatory harmonisation efforts.
The chairman’s role will require a firm hand and the clarity of thought that typified the strategic decision in 2002 to run Allergan’s spun-off surgical and contact lens businesses, which became a separate, US-listed company. Mr Mazzo, Allergan's corporate VP and global ophthalmic surgical head, stepped up to president of Advanced Medical Optics, a company with flat revenues at the time.
Two years later, he showed the vision to fill out the company’s product lines by impressively completing the acquisition of Pfizer’s ophthalmic surgical business for $450m and agreeing to buy laser vision correction VISX for $1.3bn. Later, the company made an approach to buy Bausch & Lomb. By 2007, AMO had grown into a $1.09bn company, and attracted the attention of Abbott which paid $2.8bn, including debt, to buy it in Q1 2009, renaming it Abbott Medical Optics (AMO).
Mr Mazzo’s corporate experience in the M&A area will be valuable as AdvaMed’s members move into a pivotal period. The membership will also make use of the expertise he developed while chairman of AdvaMed’s value of technology initiative and of its political action committee.
In his new role he follows the well-regarded Edwards Lifesciences chairman and CEO Michael Mussallem, who championed transparency and the association’s revised code of ethics, and whose past corporate experiences are somewhat similar to Mr Mazzo’s. Edwards, like AMO, was also a spin out - from Baxter.
Industry expects a lot from Mr Mazzo, whose term began last Wednesday. Based on his track record and approach to business, they will not be disappointed.
References
1. James Mazzo takes on AdvaMed chair, RAJ Devices online, 5 March 2010