Medtech Talk

After passing out from extremely painful complex ovarian cists at age 13, Surbhi Sarna became all too familiar with the challenges and lack of adequate solutions for women’s health. Benefiting from intelligent and entrepreneurial parents, she became so determined to start a company to tackle women’s health issues someday that she wrote it in her college application personal statement. After graduating from UC Berkely, she went to Abbott Vascular to work on some of their most innovative products before transitioning to BioCardia for more of a startup culture. While at both places, she continued to read papers about women’s health, and after she lost her grandmother to breast cancer, she decided to take her leap of faith and start nVision Medical. In this interview with host Geoff Pardo, Surbhi shares her story of founding and leading nVision, including securing a very challenging first funding round, transitioning from being an engineer to a woman CEO, negotiating the company’s eventual exit, and staying onboard to support the product’s further development as part of Boston Scientific. Here all this plus Surbhi’s thoughts on the changing landscape of women’s health and what’s next for her.

Despite the pandemic, 2020 was a successful year for medtech. The industry reaped the fruits of over a decade of concerted effort to reduce regulatory hurdles, work better with hospitals and diagnostic companies, and increase innovation. As part of the continued Medtech Talk Digital Discussion Series, host Geoff Pardo teams up with Justin Klein to co-moderate a panel interview with three medtech investment experts to recap 2020 and look to strategies for 2021: Scott Whitaker, President and CEO, AdvaMed; Mark Deem, Venture Partner, Lightstone Ventures; Managing Partner, The Foundry, LLC; and Rachel Jonas, Vice President and Investment Analyst, T. Rowe Price. The panel discusses challenges, watchouts, and opportunities for 2021; the continually evolving reimbursement landscape; the need to and how to encourage more early stage investing; public funding and whether the medtech IPO window will persist; where to invest next; and what new administration and policy issues to watch out for. Listen now to catch these valuable insights!

Inari Medical is a 2020 success story. The company was one of the first medtech companies to IPO during the pandemic. As part of the new Medtech Talk Digital Discussion Series, host Geoff Pardo had a chance to conduct a panel interview with four members of the Inari management team: Bill Hoffman, CEO; Drew Hykes, CCO; Thomas Tu, MD, CMO; and Tara Dunn, Vice President of Clinical Affairs and Market Development. The team discussed their unique culture, strong mission, early success, sales strategy and many other topics, including advice from Bill to other entrepreneurs who are considering going public, reflections from Tom on the transition from being a physician to the business world, benchmarking from Drew on how this experience compares to other ventures he has been in, and comparisons from Tara on the difference between working for a big company vs. a smaller company. Tune in now to hear from one of medtech’s most promising companies!

After an ill family member introduced Justin Barad to the world of healthcare, he decided to earn a bioengineering degree, then an MD, and eventually specialized in pediatric orthopaedics. However, Justin later opted to combine his surgical skills with his passion for software and gaming to take on a new challenge: the training of surgeons. He decided to switch from academic medicine and start Osso VR in 2016, and now the company has grown to over 60 employees serving 20 countries with over 70 procedures loaded on the platform. In this interview with host Geoff Pardo, Justin shares his view on the challenges of surgical training, how Osso VR’s virtual surgical training procedures can be used to both train and assess surgeons remotely, his transition from clinician to CEO, his experience fundraising as a new entrepreneur, and advice for other surgeons considering entrepreneurial endeavors.

After 20+ years as an academic physician, Karen Noblett was presented with a new opportunity: join Axonics as the company’s CMO. Originally, she was concerned about what her peers would think, as she had established a reputation of being ethically involved with industry and did not want to compromise that. Ultimately, she decided this presented a pathway to improving patient treatments and outcomes on a broader scale, so she accepted the position and has enjoyed the experience ever since. From helping the team build the final product to overseeing clinical trials to experiencing an IPO and finally to a successful commercial launch, Karen learned a great deal about the medical device industry. In this interview with host Geoff Pardo, Karen shares informative background on the physiology of overactive bladder and the various treatments available, including Axonic’s sacral neuromodulation device (a so called “bladder pacemaker”); recounts her transition from academia to industry; and reflects on some of her most influential mentors and how they affected her own leadership style.

Jon Bloom admits that his path to becoming a CEO was anything but linear. Originally a percussionist, Jon then found a calling for medicine and became a board-certified physician before pivoting once more to entrepreneurship. Now holding the reigns at Podimetrics, a company developing an early warning system for diabetic foot ulcers, Jon shares not only his unique career progression, but the story of how a hackathon led to the company’s inception, when to commercialize a new technology, tips for working the VA, and the revolution of telehealth during this current time.

From senior leadership positions at GE Healthcare and Medtronic to board chairman at MDIC and AdvaMed, Nadim is a seasoned medtech executive who is passionate about the industry. Now at the helm of CVRx, a company developing a pioneering technology for treating high blood pressure and heart failure, Nadim shares his experience navigating the FDA’s first Breakthrough Device Designation, working with CMS on reimbursement coding, and building CVRx’s strong leadership team

Katie Szyman is an accomplished global operating executive in the medical device industry with a passion for building high performing teams and helping innovative healthcare companies grow so patients can gain access to better therapies and outcomes. Here she shares how Edwards, critical care, and the medtech industry is adapting to COVID19, her leadership role models, and tips for expanding diversity on leadership teams and executive boards.

Mike Huggins is a leader in the medtech world whose journey from Synthes, USA COO to an indictment and prison sentence has run parallel to his discovery of yoga, mindfulness, and meditation, weaving together these experiences that have developed his passion for ethical leadership, corporate responsibility, prison reform, and the practices that have helped him along the way. 

As an English Major at Princeton, Liz Rockett could not have imagined how her VC career would take off and the places it would take her. She shares her candid career journey, from taking risks, asking questions, and using her voice to empower gender equality in the field.