Q&A With Aaron Smith of Artelon

Updated on February 13, 2021

Aaron Smith is CEO of the ortho medtech company Artelon. Artelon is headquartered in Marietta, GA, and remains committed to innovations focused on restoring joint stability and kinematics through novel soft tissue reconstructive products and procedures.

Recently he graciously took some time to respond to some questions about the company and ortho industry.

Q: You’ve pointed out a problem with overlapping solutions in orthopedics, what do you mean by that?

Smith: If we abstract it for a moment, we have a technology that is very good and differentiated. And in other areas of medicine there are probably technology companies like ours that can make a reasonable claim to the same.

But we realized that physicians aren’t looking for that technology on its own. There is a larger problem. When every technology company is bringing their solution forward without considering the full context of a procedure, or presuming everything in the procedure is someone else’s concern, that results in the overlapping point solutions.

Q: Why do you think we have this situation with overlapping solutions and complexity?

Smith: It’s partially companies focusing more on “how can I sell this thing,” than “how can I help a physician’s natural workflow become easier.” What physicians are seeking is not just a technology that can be dropped into a sales rep’s bag to pull through more sales.

That drove us to think through how could we address the full procedure our technology is a part of. This doesn’t work if it’s a full procedure package that’s just adding loss leaders to sell the technology. Nor can it be a way to get a higher price point through packaging.

Q: What is the solution?

Smith: Instead of building around our technology, we have taken a step back, looked at how gifted physicians manage to pull together all of the variables, we’ve worked backward from there to build a procedure package that includes our technology, but the benefit is more than an easier way to use our product. Our aim is to help the workflow and thinking around the procedure so even if the core technology were not ours, a physician might use our whole-procedure package because of how it intuits how they do their work and make it easier

Aaron Smith is CEO of Artelon.

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