Success in the medical 3D printing space requires the ability to engage audiences with effective technical communication. At 3DHEALS, we’ve seen researchers, clinicians, and entrepreneurs take the podium and deliver some of the most incredible presentations on the latest 3D printing technologies and innovations. At our latest 3DHEALS event, “Bench to Bedside: Bioprinting Innovations,” we heard from five industry pioneers who know how to deliver a powerful message to our audience. In this recap article, we’ll dive into what made their presentations so engaging with five key strategies that can boost your science communication skills.
Tip #1: Start with a Story that Establishes Your Credibility
Dr. Joanna Xylas, CEO and Co-Founder of Materialize Bio, began her talk with a story from her time as a clinical educator in Nicaragua in 2017. By detailing her first-hand experiences in a clinical space, Dr. Xylas is able to show us that she understands what “bench-to-bedside” truly means. She also doesn’t bog us down with the details, but rather is quick to tell us the lesson learned: “It was a moment for me where I realized that great engineers can make great innovations, but that the path to actually translating innovation to patients represents the majority of a product’s effort and success.”
By bringing us back into her past, Dr. Xylas gives her presentation a personal touch that sets her apart from the crowd. Your audience will be engaged when you give your presentation life and emotion. But the big question all speakers need to address is: Why tell this story? It’s easy to use a story to break up the monotony of a technical presentation, but a good story is one that establishes trust with your audience.
To give some background: Dr. Xylas’ product is the GLEN 3D Platform, a way of manufacturing natural biopolymers (silk, chitosan, and collagen) into 3D medical implants. One of their products is an ear tube, a device that ventilates the middle ear to manage a chronic infection, but traditionally requires a risky second surgery and anesthesia to remove.
Instead of selling us a veneer of her product, Dr. Xylas is direct about how there are significant challenges with bringing the company’s chitosan ear tubes to clinics, as it costs $500 compared to the standard $50 tube. The new tube could also be an obstacle depending on how the surgeon or facility will get paid compared to the traditional $3-6K surgery, becoming an incredibly difficult balancing act to satisfy stakeholders.
Through her story and her clear commitment to addressing the challenges of clinical translation, Dr. Xylas gives our audience confidence that she’s the best person to bring this product to market. She knows the reality of dealing with the market and ensuring the company’s value proposition really addresses the entire system and all its stakeholders.
Tip #2: Don’t Be Afraid to Talk About the Pivots
At events like these, it can be easy to think that you need to highlight the successes and end results to get the audience’s attention. However, it’s usually the presenters that talk about the journey that turn into the most inspiring moments for the audience.
Monica Wellejus, Chief Commercial Officer at Ossiform, described how the company’s founders actually started by focusing on oral maxillofacial surgery (OMS). Ossiform focuses on 3D printing bone, and she talked about how the fit seemed perfect: the company’s mission would be to fabricate patient-specific bone implants for OMS applications.
However, to make the company actually viable and bring any form of 3D bone bioprinting to market, they had to rethink their strategy and pivot since patient-specific products can be costly to make and not scalable for the long run. Instead, she described how they transitioned to the foot orthopedic market, where they could still leverage 3D printing while allowing their products to be off-the-shelf, ready for a clinician to use them.
It’s these stories of resilience and strategic thinking that make audiences gravitate towards what the speaker has to say. By sharing these turns in the road, we all can learn from each other and apply these lessons to our own pursuits. It also brings character into a presentation – enabling us to understand that overcoming the challenges in 3D printing is just as much about the science as it is about the tenacity and attitude of the people behind the technology.
Don’t be afraid to share the pivots. It’s all part of the journey.
Tip #3: Put Your Visuals in the Spotlight
It’s no surprise that some of our highest viewed YouTube shorts are ones that feature stunning 3D prints and beautiful animations. The biggest mistake presenters make is putting way too much text on a slide. A presentation slide is valuable real estate: put pictures and graphics that draw people into what you have to say rather than filler text that many people will not read.
Carlos Ezio, CEO and Co-Founder of Criocore, featured stunning bioprints in his slides. He’s pioneering the commercialization of cryobioprinting, a technique spun out of the Shrike Zhang Lab at Harvard Medical School, where he spent six years at. Cryobioprinting allows for their special cell-laden bioinks to be extruded onto a build plate then quickly undergo cryopreservation. This freezing process enables the 3D printed construct to maintain its shape rather than being one big wet goop and keeps the cells preserved for long periods of time.
In Ezio’s presentation, their cryobioprinted models were clearly the stars of the show, and the pictures were large and easy to see for the audience. Presenting on Zoom and other online platforms gives you the opportunity of displaying images that the audience will get to see up and close on their own device. Take advantage of that chance to show them prints that will get them excited about your technology.
However, what image you show matters. How does your image act as evidence for the assertion you are trying to make? Your images should clearly convey a message that answers the biggest questions your audience will potentially have, rather than just tell them that you are doing cool things. For Ezio, his visuals evidently show us that his technology has the power to create constructs with the proper shape and control he is claiming.
Tip #4: Bridge the Knowledge Gap for Cross-Disciplinary Audiences
There’s a myth that you have to “dumb it down” for audiences that might not be in your particular field. Even within medical 3D printing, you’ll still encounter parts of our audience that are highly specialized in their own area. A 3D computational modeling specialist might not have your level of two-photon polymerization knowledge, for example.
However, the tip here is that you can explain pretty much whatever you want, as long as you explain it right. There’s no need to dumb it down and insult the audience, but rather your strategic use of analogies and visuals can be carefully crafted so you can leverage what the audience already knows to get your point across.
Dr. Neeti Srivastava, Director of R&D at Bezwada Biomedical, had the challenging task of explaining the company’s polyurethane biochemistry solution to a diverse audience of 3D printing enthusiasts, some of whom don’t think about chemistry on a daily basis.
Dr. Srivastava shows us a comparison between the MDI (methylene diphenyl diisocyanate) molecule, which consists of two rings connected together, and their solution, which has an R-group between the two rings. One can think of the two rings as people holding hands so tightly that it is very hard to bring them apart. By putting something in between the two rings, the company can create compounds that degrade over time, kind of like making the two people hold a piece of string between them that can be easily cut.
By explaining the chemistry and showing how their molecules differ from traditional MDI, Dr. Srivastava gives our audience an inside look into their technology that can be easily understood, rather than hiding the details and going straight to the applications. This helps us to better understand how their products work and boosts our interest in the company.
And finally… Tip #5: Listen and Learn with Us.
Mastering the art of science communication is not simple. As we’ve seen from our event, the most effective speakers are those that root their presentations in credibility, realism, visual content, and effective technical explanations. Their work makes us truly excited for the future of bioprinting, and it’s their ability to share their personal experiences that solidifies our confidence in their vision of bringing bioprinting into the clinic. Join us in our future events to continue learning from our speaker panels, and subscribe to our newsletter and YouTube channel.
About the Author:
Peter Hsu
Peter Hsu is an editorial intern for 3DHEALS. He is currently an undergraduate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and studies bioengineering with a focus on cell and tissue engineering. He is also minoring in computer science with interests in artificial intelligence and image processing. Peter conducts research on using computer vision methods to analyze human tissue images and improve the robustness of machine learning workflows. He is interested in the use of AI to assist tissue engineering and bioprinting research for medical applications. He is passionate about science communication and leads STEM outreach lessons at schools in the central Illinois area.
Related Links:
Event Recap: 3D-Printed Devices In Orthopedics
Event Recap: Microfluidic Devices and 3D Printing
Expert Corner: AI in Healthcare 3D Printing: The Future is Now
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