Category: MassDevice Q&A
Levitronix CEO Kurt Dasse on the company's roots at Thermo Fisher Scientific, why its magnetic levitation technology is so well-suited to implantable cardiac assist devices and how the medical device excise tax could force consolidation in the medical device industry.
Kurt Dasse, the CEO of Waltham, Mass.-based Levitronix, counts a stint as chief scientific office for Thermo Electron Corp., better known today as Thermo Fisher Scientific as key to his professional career. His tenure at Thermo proved fateful, as it was there that Dasse came under the wing of the legendary George Hatsopoulos and his fervent devotion to starting new companies.
CEO Ron Ranauro on GenomeQuest's customizable API, the falling cost of human genome sequencing and the ethical implications of widespread access to personal genome data.
Ron Ranauro spent the better part of two decades in the computer industry, watching as the personal computer and the Internet transformed the business. It's growing maturity coincided with early efforts to sequence the human genome, leading Ranauro in the late 1990s to apply his computing chops to the life science scene.
MassDevice spoke with Ranauro as GenomeQuest launched an application programming interface that allows developers to customize apps for their labs' research programs. We asked him about the API, what sets his venture apart from other sequencing data management firms (hint: it's in the clouds) and got his take on the ethical implications of widespread access to genome sequencing technology.
PatientKeeper Inc. president and CEO Paul Brient on why healthcare IT won't save the healthcare system, why it's still crucial to healthcare reform and how it could revolutionize the practice of medicine.
Paul Brient, the president and CEO of PatientKeeper Inc., has spent 20 years in the healthcare IT trenches, first with the physician practice management software start-up he founded and ran, BCS Inc. After stints at McKesson Corp. (NYSE:MCK), HPR Inc. and The Boston Consulting Group, he joined PatientKeeper in 2002.
Myomo Inc. CEO Steve Kelly on his company's portable, robotic device for stroke rehabilitation and the coming wave that will revolutionize the medical device industry as we know it.
Steve Kelly's spent three decades watching new technology that originated in consumer electronics wreak havoc on well-established industries. The CEO of Myomo Inc. bore witness as new technologies redefined the home computing market in the 1980s, the telecom space in the 1990s and the changes voice-over-IP technology brought to telephony in the last decade.
Kelly sees a similar wave heading for the shores of the medical device industry. MassDevice spoke with him to hear his take on where the sector is headed and why.
CeQur CEO Jim Peterson on his personal ties to diabetes technologies and why his company is poised to be the leader in next-generation insulin delivery devices.
Jim Peterson spent the better part of 20 years helping to improve the quality of the world's blood supply at Haemonetics Corp. (NYSE:HAE), where he was CEO from 1998 to 2003. And while he was passionate about the importance of that work, his new role as chief executive for CeQur Ltd. might be even closer to his heart.
Peterson spoke with MassDevice just before giving a presentation on the patch-like device CeQur is developing for insulin delivery at the OneMedPlace Finance Forum in San Francisco Jan. 13. He told us about the personal connection he feels to his current work, which stems from the fact that his daughter has diabetes, and why he sees Montreux, Switzerland-based CeQur's device as a potential market leader.
Covidien's medical devices division president on reviving the company after its spinout from Tyco Healthcare and how it turned around in a down economy.
José Almeida knows what it takes to succeed. The native of Brazil, a mechanical engineer by training, put down roots in the U.S. 20 years ago and never looked back.
Since then he's worked his way up the corporate ladder at firms including Acufex Microsurgical, Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), Greatbatch Technologies and Tyco Healthcare. When the latter spun out into Covidien in late June, 2007, Almeida had been in his current role for a year already after spending the better part of 12 years with the company.
Researchers Sanket Dhruva and Rita Redberg on the hornet's nest they stirred up with their study of the Food & Drug Administration's approval process for high-risk cardiovascular devices.
It's not often that a few doctors ensconced in the ivy towers of academia can get a lumbering dinosaur like the Food & Drug Administration to turn on a dime, let alone during the week between Christmas and the new year.
But that's exactly what University of California at San Francisco researchers Sanket S. Dhruva, Lisa Bero and Rita Redberg did after the Journal of the American Medical Assn. published their paper "Strength of Study Evidence Examined by the FDA in Premarket Approval of Cardiovascular Devices."
