AHF Podcast
The AHF Podcast features thoughtful conversations about orthopedic surgery, outcomes, and clinical decision-making, with a particular focus on hip surgery and related innovation.
Produced by the Anterior Hip Foundation, the podcast brings together surgeons, researchers, and clinical leaders to examine how evidence, experience, and real-world practice intersect. Episodes explore what the data actually shows, where assumptions break down, and how clinicians navigate uncertainty in daily practice.
This podcast is intended for orthopedic surgeons, trainees, and medically literate clinicians who value nuanced discussion, critical thinking, and honest examination of what improves patient care.
Episodes
82 episodes
JointMedica & the Hip Resurfacing Comeback
Hip resurfacing was written off after the metal-on-metal era — but the patients kept coming back happy. Two surgeons who never stopped offering it explain what changed, and what a vitamin E polyethylene bearing does to the failure mode that end...
Managing Instability in AA Hips (S+N Surgeon Roundtable)
Dislocation after anterior approach total hip replacement still runs around 2% in the first two years — so what actually moves that number?Three hip surgeons work through instability prevention end to end, from the first clinic visit to...
The 2026 Shark Tank Winners Rethinking Surgical Imaging
What if the C-arm you already own could show you the entire pelvis — in real time, with less radiation? The winners of the 2026 AHF Shark Tank believe it can, and they built the system to prove it.Dr. Dean Cole, an orthopedic trauma sur...
Operation FUBAR: Eight Challenging Hips with Nick Mast
What do you do when the foot slips out of the traction boot mid-case — and a manageable periprosthetic fracture becomes a femur in pieces? Dr. Nick Mast has an answer, because it happened to him.Nick Mast, a hip and pelvis surgeon in pr...
Complex primary THA with AA (S+N Surgeon Roundtable)
What do you do the moment a calcar crack appears? Where does the cup go when the spine won't move? And which complex primary belongs in an ASC — and which one absolutely doesn't?This episode launches a six-part surgeon roundtable series...
From Idea to Market: Ep 12 - From Here, It's Yours
In the finale of From Idea to Market, the surgeons, engineers, founders, attorneys, and investors who lived every stage of medical device innovation look back and answer one question: what do they wish they had known from the start?Acro...
From Idea to Market: Ep 11 - Built to Last or Built to Sell?
Is your med tech company built to last, or built to sell? Voices from inside Stryker, XRSynergies, FIOS Health, and physician contract law explain why exit strategy is a design choice founders make on day one — whether they realize it or not.
Operation FUBAR: One-in-Six-Million Bone
What do you do when the greater trochanter shears off during a routine hip replacement — and the bone is too soft to hold a screw? Dr. Jeff Barry of UCSF walks through two intraoperative disasters in the same patient, and how he salvaged both.<...
Mapping How the World Really Does Hip Replacement
How does hip replacement practice really differ from one country to the next? Researcher Irrum Afzal joins the AHF Podcast to discuss the Global Arthroplasty Practice Survey (GAPS) — the first effort to map how surgeons worldwide actually perfo...
From Idea to Market: Ep 10 - What Breaks at Scale
What real-world use reveals about a medical device that no clinical trial ever could — and why the most dangerous moment in med tech innovation often comes after success, not before. A conversation about the fatigue failures, reimbursement gaps...
FITM Extended Interview: Alexander Sah
Alex Sah on what it actually takes for a practicing surgeon to develop new orthopaedic tools — from first idea to OR adoption.An honest conversation about mentors, mistakes, AI, and knowing when to walk away from a collaboration.
From Idea to Market: Ep 9 - Inside the Decision Room
What med tech investors and strategic acquirers actually evaluate when a founder walks into the room — and what separates the pitches that earn capital from those that don't. A conversation drawn from people who've sat on both sides of the tabl...
FITM Extended Interview: Charles Lawrie (FIOS Health)
Charles Lawrie, MD — president of the Anterior Hip Foundation and a high-volume anterior approach hip and robotic knee surgeon in Miami — walks us through how a frustration in his own clinic became FIOS Health, an AI-powered patient communicati...
From Idea to Market: Ep 8 - Built to Run
What does it actually take to move a medical device from a working prototype to a product that can be built reliably at volume? In this episode of From Idea to Market, surgeons, founders, and attorneys describe the discipline that separates an ...
FITM Extended Interview: Emily Ast
There is no such thing as an off-the-record innovation discussion. Even a casual conversation over drinks can create a factual record of idea sharing that impacts patent ownership, joint development leverage, and your negotiating position for y...
FITM Extended Interview: XRS Medical (Marie-Isabelle Batthyány)
A patient had already signed every document — but no one had told her she would lose her stomach. That moment early in her anesthesia training convinced Marie-Isabelle Batthyány that informed consent was fundamentally broken. Years later, she b...
FITM Extended Interview: Simon Mifsud (Garland Surgical, Ltd.)
Garland Surgical's flagship product, the TriActiv Hip (formerly known as the MaltaHip), replaces the ball-and-socket geometry that has defined hip arthroplasty for 120 years with a cylindrical bearing system inspired by the biomechanics of the ...
From Idea to Market: Ep 7 - Beyond Clearance
Your device just got FDA clearance. So why isn't anyone using it? In this episode of From Idea to Market, Joe Schwab and a panel of surgeons, engineers, and MedTech leaders explore why regulatory approval is only the beginning — and what it act...
FITM Extended Interview: Charlie DeCook
Charlie DeCook has exited seven medical device companies while performing 1,500 joint replacements a year — all packed into three clinical days per week. In this extended interview, he breaks down exactly how he evaluates new technologies and w...
From Idea to Market: Ep 6 - The Valley Between Idea and Approval
What actually happens between building a medical device and getting it approved? In this episode of From Idea to Market, we walk through the regulatory valley that separates a working prototype from a cleared product — and why so many promising...
FITM: The Extended Conversation with Doug Fairbanks
Doug Fairbanks left a robotics commercialization role at Johnson & Johnson to lead a deep tech startup most surgeons had never heard of. In this conversation, the president and CEO of VISIE Inc. explains why — and what their continuous anat...
From Idea to Market: Ep 5 - Financing the Journey
Most MedTech founders think financing is about getting enough money to keep building. But once you take capital, it reshapes your governance, your priorities, and your pace — and some consequences don't surface for years.In this episode ...
FITM: The Full Conversation with Robert Cohen
Robert Cohen has spent four decades on both sides of the MedTech table — founding companies, selling them, and now evaluating billion-dollar acquisitions as Stryker's VP of Innovation and Technology for Orthopedics. In this conversation, he sha...
The Team Behind the Surgeon: Efficiency Lessons From Canada
Dr. Sebastian Rodriguez-Elizalde built a same-day anterior hip program inside a Canadian public hospital — not a private surgical center. This conversation covers what it actually takes to change your approach, your team culture, and your syste...
FITM: The Full Conversation with ForCast Orthopedics
This is a deep-dive extended interview with the team behind ForCast Orthopedics — a company working to change how periprosthetic joint infection is treated. It's for orthopedic surgeons, arthroplasty specialists, and anyone interested in how a ...