The Filter

MEDICAL DEVICE INNOVATORS is a collection of interviews with the founders, business leaders, industry icons and regulators focused on the leading edge of device development.

Among the questions I hope to answer: What happened on the road to building your company/companies? Where did they ideas come from? What was the medical need you were trying to solve? What was it like when you were just a couple of friends with an idea? How did you convince investors to back the company? How did you deal with the FDA? What went wrong along the way? How did you recover? What were the surprises and discoveries that were learned on the way to building a company? What were the non-intuitive lessons you learned? What are the secrets to making a successful startup productive? What are the secrets to keeping a leading company innovative? Where is the industry headed?

The goal is to make these interviews required reading for anyone that wants to understand innovation in the medical device business because startups are business reduced to its essence.

Among those invited to participate in Medical Device Innovators are John Abele (Boston Scientific), Robin Bellas (Morgenthaler), Michael Berman (AngioSlide, BeneChill, InterValve), Nancy Briefs (InfoBionic), Steve Burrill (Burrill & Co.), Annette Campbell-White (MedVenture Associates), Louis Cannon (BioStar Ventures), Jose Colucci (innovation consultant, Ideo), Frank DeBernardis (Nascent Technologies), Sailesh Chutani (Mobisante), James Dreher (Access Closure, Option 3), Juan Enriquez (Excel Medical Ventures, Biotechonomy), Tom Fogerty, Mike Gertner (Essex Woodlands), Hanson Gifford (The Foundry), Bob Higgins (Highland General), Eitan Konstantino (TriReme Medical), Fred Khosravi (Embolic Protection, Incept), Ray Kurzweil, Frank Litvack MD (Bruin Biometrics), Josh Makowver (Stanford), Fred Moll (Intuitive Surgical), Peter Nicholas (Boston Scientific), Steve Oesterle (Medtronic), Hank Plain (Morganthaler), Chris Porter (Medical Genesis), Heather Rosencrans (GreenLeafHealthLLC.com), Amr Salahieh (Shifamed), Patrick Soon-Shiong (Healthcare Transformation Institute and NantWorks), Richard Stack (Synecor), Josh Tolkoff (Ironwood Capital), Eric Topol (Cleveland Clinic), Sonny Vu (Misfit Wearables, Agamatrix), Mark Wan (Three Arch), Chris Wasden (PwC), Paul Yock (Stanford), and executives at major medical device companies.

The technology industry has FOUNDERS AT WORK: STORIES OF STARTUP’S EARLY DAYS. The medical device industry has one book of interviews, Medical Device Daily’s $300+ Peer Wisdom from 33 Med-Tech Luminaries. MEDICAL DEVICE INNOVATORS will provide an accessible, affordable inside view of medical device startups and the serial entrepreneurs who have built them.