WIROC 2025 isn’t my first introduction to orthopaedics. My grandmother turned her spine consultation into a full presentation, which is why I’m hoping this conference has fewer dramatic pauses. What really stood out that day wasn’t the situation, but her surgeons’ ability to communicate with calm, simple clarity while navigating questions that ranged from practical and expected to creative, including the kind you answer diplomatically even when you know the Google search history behind them.
My appreciation for orthopaedic surgeons grew tremendously. Tiptoeing the line between complex diagnoses, jargon-heavy explanations, and the need to replace them with simpler terms that are accurate and easy for the patient (and their family) to understand is not easy. You don’t realise how valuable that skill is until you watch someone do it well. It even resurfaced a small part of my childhood self, the one who once declared she’d become an oncologist, mostly because I’ve always been drawn to work that demands both intelligence and empathy.
Seeing my grandmother’s spine surgeons lead with clarity and care made me realise how inseparable those two qualities are in this field, especially in an industry often misunderstood from the outside. That experience is a key reason WIROC feels worth engaging with. Conferences like this shape conversations that start from orthopaedic knowledge and public curiosity, the kind that might otherwise become a WhatsApp forward, but here, backed by credibility that takes decades to earn.
As someone who works in the overlapping space between healthcare information and nonclinical audiences, it is clear how important it is to translate complex decisions, techniques, and outcomes without losing the medical essence behind them. Context is key, even more so in healthcare, often tenfold. Conferences like WIROC influence how orthopaedic knowledge moves beyond academic circles and into the real world. That handoff between specialists and everyone else is the part I pay attention to.
I have spent the last few years working with organisations that deal with heavy information, whether in healthcare, policy, or public impact. The pattern is predictable. The science is usually solid. When I was working with Sunnybrook Foundation during their early progress on non-invasive approaches to Alzheimer’s treatment, it became clear that the real challenge was helping the average person understand what was possible and feel connected enough to support it. The gap is almost always in how the information is delivered to the people who need it. Orthopaedics is a good reminder of that.
A clear explanation can shift a whole room, and a confusing one can do the exact opposite. I pay attention to that shift because it is where most people decide what they believe, what they fear, and what they trust.
WIROC looks like the kind of space where the technical side of the field meets the practical side without pretending one matters more than the other. The research, the discussions, the cases, all of it feeds into how orthopaedic information eventually moves outward. I am interested in hearing how specialists talk when they are speaking to each other, not performing for anyone else.
That is usually where the real thinking shows up, and where good communication starts before it ever reaches the rest of us. My work begins after specialists have done theirs. Spaces like WIROC are where the real thinking is formed, and everything else follows from there.
There is a point where specialist thinking becomes public information, and that point deserves care. It is the space I work in. I lead Sage & Esther as its Founder and Chief Marketing Officer, focusing on communication that stays accurate without losing people in the process. If your organisation needs its message delivered clearly and without unnecessary noise, we can help make sure it lands the way it should.
This conversation continues at ananya@sageandesther.com
If you write, I’ll read. Nothing gets lost in transit.
Sage & Esther — Global Health Communications Agency 