Medtech Talk

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...

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 Oss...

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 outcome...

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...

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 wit...

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 diver...

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. 

Butterfly Network CEO Laurent Faracci shares his experience leading a company through the Coronavirus outbreak, while producing lifesaving technology to battle the crisis. Laurent joined Butterfly as the Coronavirus spread to a global pandemic level, but he isn’t slowing down. Under his leadership, Butterfly continues to grow as their cutting-edge ultrasound technology proves itself a leading adva...

Joe Army’s career journey through the medtech industry has been anything but easy, but he does not back down from a challenge, and he’s sharing the greatest lessons that have helped him pave his own way. 

Medtech Talk welcomes its new host, Geoff Pardo! Geoff is a dynamic partner at Gilde Healthcare who uses his passion for medtech to share stories from industry leaders.  

In this interview, Murthy Simhambhatla, president and CEO of SetPoint Medical, explains why he moved into the Medtech industry and how that path has positioned him to lead SetPoint Medical, one of the industry’s most promising start-ups. 

In this episode, Mike Favet, the new CEO of NeuroPace, shares his personal story into Medtech and reveals his plans for one of Medtech’s pioneers, NeuroPace. What convinced him to become CEO? What changes will he make at NeuroPace?

In this interview, Frank Fischer and Martha Morrell, MD, recount the long history of NeuroPace, one of Medtech’s neurostimulation pioneers. 

In this episode of Medtech Talk, Duke Rohlen, CEO of AJAX Health, answers several critical questions about the importance of names. What’s his real name? Why is the AJAX name so important to him? And how did he employ “stair stepping” to make a name for himself in Medtech (before founding, funding and exiting several high profile start-ups.) 

Kim Rodriguez expected to follow her mom’s career in medicine. But she got bit by the Medtech Bug early and enjoyed a string of sales success at companies of nearly every size including Cocentric, Spectranetics, and Guidant. But three years ago she got recruited to be CEO of a company that was rich in promising technologies as well as business challenges. In just three years, Rodriguez and her tea...

Justin Klein and Kirk Nielsen entered venture capital separately 13 years ago, taking roles at two of the top firms in Medtech. Over that time, the two VCs have led investment in more than a dozen Medtech companies that have either gone public or been acquired. Now, the pair have joined forces to create Vensana Capital, a new investor in Medtech. In this episode, you’ll hear why they decided to ve...

Growing up in Canada, Kevin Lobo only knew he wanted to be a senior executive at a global company someday. That overriding objective took him through the consumer good and chemical industries before the financial executive found his first job in Medtech. In this interview conducted at the Medtech Conference in Minneapolis, Lobo reveals that while he first was reluctant to take that Medtech job, he...

Thank you for your support of the MedtechTalk Podcast. We hope to see you at the Medtech Conference next week. We’ll be posting compelling interviews with Medtech’s leaders immediately after the conference.   

In this week’s podcast, Agnes Berzsenyi, president and CEO of Women’s Health at GE Healthcare, explains how her upbringing in Hungary during a time of political upheaval put her in position to succeed in Medtech. The fall of the Berlin Wall – in addition to presenting a valuable life lesson - gave her the chance to study engineering in the US and secure a job at GE, first in the aviation business....

Howard Levin and Mark Gelfand, the principals of Coridea, return to the podcast to detail the trials and tribulations of Ardian. Ardian is one of the bigger #medtech #startup stories over the past two decades. In 2011, Medtronic agreed to pay $800 million upfront for this company that pushed the once crazy idea of ablating renal nerves to lower hypertension. Ardian had raised $70 million from a sy...

Over the past decade, no other Medtech start-up has moved markets as much or as quickly as Ardian, the godfather of the renal denervation surge a decade ago. But the gold rush dried up in 2014 when Medtronic delivered disappointing clinical trial news that left many to declare “Renal Denervation is Dead.” Well, if we may borrow from Monty Python, renal denervation is not dead yet.  In this two-par...

In this episode of the MedtechTalk Podcast, we talk with Shyam Natarajan, PhD, founder and CEO of Avenda Health, a company using imaging, AI and focal lasers to create a better treatment for prostate cancer.  The company’s original co-founders – Natarajin and Dr. Leonard Marks -  started working on the company in earnest five years ago, but recently has begun getting real traction and making big m...

You’ll have a hard time finding a more modest man than Dennis Wahr, president and CEO of Nuvaira. But when asked what company he sees as being poised to establish the Interventional Pulmonology industry Wahr says Nuvaira might be the one. Nuvaira’s Targeted Lung Denervation, or TLD, is a non-surgical procedure that interrupts overactive nerve signals and may reduce obstructive airway symptoms, hel...

Anyone who has swapped emails with Scott Huennekens has seen the Go Go Go signature at the bottom. They’re three little words, but they say so much about the special brand of enthusiasm Huennekens brings to leading companies like Digirad, Volcano, and most recently, Verb, the partnership between Google and Johnson & Johnson. In this podcast, Huennekens explains what he learned about maintainin...