Daniel Hawkins is the President and CEO of Shockwave Medical. He began his career in marketing and business development roles for Advanced Cardiovascular Systems, otherwise known as ACS, which is now part of Abbott Vascular. Following ACS, he held senior roles in general management, marketing, and business development with a number of private a ...…

Eric Stone cofounded Velano Vascular with Dr. Pitou Devgon, an internal medicine physician. Velano’s first device, PIVO, enables needle-free blood draws directly from peripheral IV catheters. Velano Vascular is backed by a series of well-respected investment firms, leading U.S. health systems, and dozens of health industry veterans. Before star ...…

Michael Branagan-Harris is the CEO of Device Access UK and has been involved in the marketing of medical devices to the National Health Service (NHS) for the last 27 years. Products he’s commercialized range from simple wound dressings to the introduction of the Lap Band for obesity, endovascular graft repair, endo laparoscopic surgery, and the ...…

Bruce Shook joined Intact Vascular in 2014 as President and CEO. A highly-experienced, medical device executive with more than 30 years of industry experience, Bruce was previously Co-founder, Director, President, and CEO of Neuronetics, which is a privately held medical device company that markets a non-invasive brain stimulation technology fo ...…

Dr. Bob Smouse has over 20 years of experience in interventional radiology, endovascular surgery and clinical research. In addition to acting as CEO and CMO of BrightWater Medical and teaching at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, he provides interventional medical services to local hospitals through Central Illinois Radiology Asso ...…

More than a decade ago, AUM Cardiovascular founder Dr. Marie Johnson was a doctoral student when tragedy struck her and her family. Her husband, Rob, passed away suddenly at the age of 41. He had blockages in his coronary arteries including a ruptured plaque in the left anterior descending artery supplying a large part of the heart muscle. At t ...…

Shaun Bagai is the CEO of RenovoRx. He has over 16 years of medtech experience across multiple functional areas like clinical research, sales, marketing, and market development. He was instrumental in developing the European market for renal denervation, which led to the acquisition of the first renal denervation company, Ardian, by Medtronic i ...…

Bill Facteau joined Earlens Corporation as Chairman, President, and CEO in November of 2013. Most recently, he was the Vice Chairman of ExploraMed, a medical device incubator based on the West Coast and an Entrepreneur in Residence at New Enterprise Associates. Previously, Bill was at Johnson & Johnson from early 2010 through early 2012 as Worl ...…

Dr. John Simpson. Even if you’re a medical device newbie, you’ve probably heard of him. He’s credited with inventing and commercializing the first over-the-wire balloon catheter used for percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA). This single idea created the field of interventional cardiology as we know it today. Over the course of ...…

Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, has famously stated, “Timing, perseverance, and 10 years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.” In the world of medtech startups, this is almost always the case. And it’s certainly true with UroLift, a device that came to life in the fall of 2004. In this interview with Ted Lams ...…

Engaging with patients in a genuine and transparent way is tough. Really tough. It’s challenging for all healthcare stakeholders – payers, providers, and industry. From a medtech perspective, we often times get stuck in a certain mindset when trying to engage with patients. Whether it’s a continuous glucose monitor for diabetic patients or a ne ...…

CMS has an objective to shift 50% of all reimbursement services from fee-for-service to alternative, value-based methods by 2018. And bundled payment models, according to Dr. Dan Mazanec, will be the principal driver of this transformative initiative. But the topic of value-based healthcare can be pretty confusing , right? Comprehensive Care fo ...…

For as long as I can remember, at every company meeting I’ve ever been to, the topic of off-label promotion is always covered. Whether it was new-hire orientation, a national sales meeting, or some other large commercial event, the dissemination of off-label information was always presented as not only a fireable offense, but something that cou ...…

Jack Dorsey received quite a bit of attention when he was recently announced as CEO of Twitter. Why? Because that made him CEO of 2 of the most rapidly-growing tech. companies in Silicon Valley at the same – Twitter and Square. Well, medtech’s version of Jack Dorsey might be Duke Rohlen. Duke led FoxHollow Technologies through an IPO and then l ...…

I’ll be candid. This is an interview I’ve wanted to do for quite some time. During my time at Covidien, I considered myself fortunate to be involved with the acquisition of Sapheon, a startup company that manufactured a disruptive therapy for venous reflux. The more I learned about Sapheon through the diligence process (as well as the post-acqu ...…

When most people think of the wearables space, devices like the Fitbit or the Apple Watch come to mind. But over the past few years, there’s been a lot of development with respect to wearable devices that were designed for the traditional healthcare market. Medtronic launched the SEEQ device. Although implantable, St. Jude commercialized the Ca ...…

Because of diminishing margins, a lot of major medical device companies continue to add products to their sales bag in hopes of meeting top-line revenue goals. But selling the entire bag is challenging. When the bag gets too big, a typical sales force will usually focus only on products that generate the most revenue. So what happens to those p ...…

Henry Ford is famous for stating, “If I had asked people what they wanted, I would have built a faster horse.” Although it’s arguable whether he ever uttered those words, the statement is still very powerful. And it’s one that Hugh Narciso has taken to heart. In fact, in the early days of BAROnova, when Hugh and his team were getting feedback f ...…

Sean Moore went from medical device sales rep to VP of Sales for one of the largest medtech companies in less than 10 years. Pretty impressive, right? Just like me, you might be thinking, “How did he do it? Killer sales results year after year? Right place at the right time?” In this interview with Sean Moore, VP of Sales and Marketing for ConM ...…

It’s safe to say that IDNs are important customers for the overwhelming majority of medical device companies. Therefore, it’s probably rational to assume that medtech companies do a good job of tracking the changing IDN landscape, right? Wrong. Based on the 2014 ZS Associates Commercial Operations Benchmark Study, only 56% of medtech companies ...…

According to a recent L.E.K. survey of hospital executives, 56% of the respondents haven taken steps to reduce medical device sales rep access to their facilities. In fact, the CEO of an Illinois hospital stated, “We’re constantly trying to limit the sales reps…We want to see what they’re selling before they get a hold of a doctor who brings it ...…

Information overload is an issue that all of us face. Finding a decent signal in the midst of a very noisy world is a difficult challenge. Few are able to master it on a consistent basis. And that includes doctors. Check out some of these stats: 100,000 scientific journals are now in circulation. 30,000 new clinical trials are funded annually. ...…

What do Stryker, Biomet, Medtronic, and Boston Scientific all have in common? Yes, they all manufacture medical devices. But more specifically, all four of these medtech companies have implantable device divisions. And from 2005 – 2011, the implantable device segment has been the most consistent top performer relative to other categories includ ...…

Warren Buffet is often quoted as stating, “The best time to be greedy is when others are fearful.” But can this same concept apply to the medtech space? Can limited partners (the investors in a venture fund) be sold on the idea of bankrolling early stage medical device companies? In this interview with Mike Carusi, General Partner at Lightstone ...…

How will healthcare reform affect care delivery and reimbursement? And what will the impact be for medical device companies? These are probably the 2 biggest questions that medtech companies need to answer in order to succeed in the future. Unfortunately, there aren’t solid answers at this point. But there are some people that can help! In this ...…

Picture this. You’re a medical device sales rep covering a procedure in one part of your territory. But unexpectedly, you get a call from a physician needing case support on the other side of your geography. What do you do? There’s no way you can cover the case, right? The drive-time won’t allow you to get the hospital in time. Perhaps your onl ...…

The lean startup movement has become increasingly popular within the tech community after the release of Eric Ries’ book in 2011. Although I personally believe the lean startup methodology is brilliant, some aspects are difficult to apply to the medtech space. For example, it costs significantly less money to iterate on a software idea in compa ...…

The 2.3% medical device tax is burdensome. Regulatory timelines are long (and expensive). Reimbursement is not only decreasing, but also incredibly hard to obtain. Venture capitalists are losing interest in early stage medical device deals. Is it all downhill for medtech? There is no doubt the current healthcare environment is challenging. But ...…

Did you know the FDA recently issued a multi-million dollar contract to a private company that will be charged with monitoring social media? Yes, multi-million. Needless to say, that’s a significant amount of money. Although many would argue the FDA has not been very clear regarding its guidance towards social media, you can’t deny that the FDA ...…

As the world of healthcare continues to change and evolve, hospitals and healthcare providers are facing a major dilemma. There will continue to be an increasing number of patients that need healthcare. But, the reimbursement for healthcare services will continue to decline. In other words, there will be more customers checking out, but less mo ...…