Progress in sexual medicine depends on collaboration between clinicians, researchers and the industry partners who develop new diagnostics, devices and treatments.
In the International Sponsor Spotlight, ESSM invites its international sponsors to introduce themselves: who they are, how they approach sexual health, and how they work with healthcare professionals and patients. Each spotlight is an interview based on the same set of questions, covering innovation, scientific evidence, patient needs and ethics.
The views expressed in these interviews are those of the interviewed companies and their representatives. Publication does not constitute an endorsement by ESSM of any product, treatment or service.
Olympus – Matt Young, MD, Medical Director Urology
My name is Matt Young, MD. I am from the United States, a urologist and clinically practiced for sixteen years before joining Olympus about three years ago to serve as the medical director for Urology. Olympus is a global medical technology company dedicated to improving people’s lives through innovative healthcare solutions. There are many areas of therapeutic focus within the company and urology is one of the larger ones. Within urology, we focus on benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), stone disease, and bladder cancer, with an emphasis on minimally invasive technologies.
As medical director I wear “several hats”, but in essence my role focuses on ensuring that our product development, clinical evidence generation, educational activities, and strategy are aligned with the needs of physicians and patients. One might say that my responsibility is to translate the clinical science, unmet patient needs, and physician’s perspectives into the business and innovation decisions.
The prostate is one of the organs of reproduction and so the relationship with sexual medicine is intertwined. As most men age they begin to experience BPH symptoms, but also experience sexual dysfunction. However, most legacy therapy for BPH can negatively impact sexual function. Men want improvement in their BPH symptoms without having to make a trade-off for things like ejaculation. Consequently, physicians increasingly evaluate treatment options not only based on symptom relief but also on preservation of quality of life and sexual health.
There are a number of challenges and each patient has different goals. There is not a “one size fits all” treatment for BPH, so the urologist has to take the clinical picture (ie. the patient’s anatomy, severity of symptoms, other medical conditions) and put it in the context of the patient’s other goals like maintaining sexual function. That’s not a simple thing to do.
One of our biggest areas of innovation has been the introduction of iTind to the market. The mechanism of action for the procedure does not use heat or tissue ablation to treat BPH. Because of these unique attributes of iTind, it provides a durable and effective treatment for BPH with a very low rate of sexual dysfunction.
We have a regular cadence of discussions with key academic and community leaders in the field. Of course, we also are part of academic conferences, lead clinical studies, collaborative research programs and are engaged with the professional societies in urology.
The patient is at the center of everything we do. Olympus’ core mission is to make people’s lives safer, healthier and more fulfilling.
How does your company collaborate with healthcare professionals and researchers to improve outcomes?
There are a number of formalized avenues for that collaboration including advisory boards, investigator-initiated studies, collaborative research, professional education programs and programs at professional congresses. Those are just some of the interactions, but from that you are working to gain an understanding of the unmet needs and how to develop innovative solutions.
Probably that sexual health has become a more central part of the discussion with patients when planning treatment for a variety of urologic issues. Taking the BPH example again, it’s no longer enough to just talk about efficacy of the treatments, but patients want to understand how their quality of life will be impacted.
As mentioned earlier, at Olympus the patient is at the center of what we do, working to deliver innovative treatments that are safe and effective. Med tech of course operates within a highly regulated environment and we work closely with the regulatory agencies to ensure compliance, patient safety and patient access to the latest treatments.
It’s been amazing to see the growth of options for BPH management, from minimally invasive to extirpative approaches and new treatments being launched. There is this ongoing shift that incorporates these new options, but also the growing voice of patients, to select the treatment best suited to the individual and their goals. This is part of what I find so compelling about iTind, in that there are fewer trade-offs that have to be made (in terms of sexual side effects) and preserving optionality for other treatments in the future should they be needed.
We’ve been looking at this issue for some time and have initiated a number of steps to improve physician education. We’ve also been working on the patient side to improve understanding and awareness through a global booster campaign.
Probably the strong emphasis on patient quality of life. I think if you were to ask physicians about their goals for a given patient and then ask the patient, you would get two different answers. At the end of the day the patient is the focus and I’ve been really pleased to see this shift in recent years and Olympus is working diligently to provide solutions that are patient centric.
Unfortunately could not attend this year, but looking forward to Valencia in 2027.
