Rounds

The Best MedTech Founders Don't Build Products, They Build Exits with Brent Lavin

MedTech founders build brilliant technology and expect hospitals to buy their products immediately. Technology fails every day. Clinical, regulatory, and commercial teams work in isolation.  You need an integrator. Brent Lavin fixes this problem by drawing upon 20 years of product management experience to unite these separate teams and build a profitable business. Learn how to turn medical ideas into successful exits. 🎯 BIGGEST TAKEAWAY [05:39]: "I view everything through the business model. Everything should be contained within the cost and revenue function of a business model.” MORE KEY TAKEAWAYS: 🚨 THE FATAL TRAP [07:37]: Tired of building products that nobody buys? "We went out and pressure tested it with real doctors. They said, ‘Nice to have, not need to have… I'm not going to pay extra for it.’" Watch Brent explain why you must kill good ideas that lack a clear business model. 🛠️ SMART TRIAL DESIGN [17:15]: "We often design clinical trials for approval purposes, but we're missing a massive opportunity if we don't include data for commercialization purposes." Get the exact strategy to capture data that proves your operational value to buyers. 💰 ACQUISITION MULTIPLIER [24:50]: "The strategics really want it at that margin level the day that they acquire it." See exactly how top operators build acquisition readiness into their products from day one. CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Why Medtech Innovation Fails Without Integration 01:32 - The Integrator Role in Medtech Teams 05:02 - Turning Medtech Ideas Into Businesses 06:40 - Need-to-Have vs Nice-to-Have Features 10:29 - Winning With Niche Market Positioning 12:41 - Building Strong Medtech Teams 14:08 - Driving Physician Adoption Strategies 16:20 - Pricing and Reimbursement Strategy Basics 20:43 - Adapting to ASC Market Shifts 22:12 - Building Early Acquisition Readiness 23:43 - Tailoring Strategic Buyer Pitches 27:35 - Ironwood and Fractional Leadership for Startup Growth 🔗 CONNECT WITH BRENT LAVIN: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-lavin/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-lavin/]• Ironwood Medtech Partners: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ironwood-medtech-partners/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/ironwood-medtech-partners/] #MedTech #ProductManagement #HealthcareBusiness

From Fitbit Consults to AI ECGs: The 18-Year Arc of Medicine's Wearable Revolution with Dr. Kenneth Civello

Is the flood of data from wearable technology overwhelming your clinical practice? Many physicians see information from an Apple Watch or Whoop and question its reliability. This continuous stream of medical data, however, represents a new era in medicine. A device on a patient's wrist can now provide the first signal of disease before a scheduled visit. The shift from episodic checkups to continuous, AI-enabled patient monitoring is here. Cardiologist and digital health innovator Dr. Kenneth Civello argues that ignoring this trend is a mistake. Clinicians who fail to adapt may miss early signs of heart rhythm disorders and face burnout from data overload. Dr. Civello offers a clear guide for using wearable healthcare AI to improve patient outcomes. He explains how to turn simple biometric data into clinically meaningful health predictions in this fascinating discussion that shows how medicine can adapt to a new model of streaming care. 🎯 KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS: ⚠️ CLINICAL WARNING [11:52]: "If you truly don't understand how the algorithm is getting the answer, you could be hurting your patient." Dr. Civello explains why a foundational knowledge of AI is critical for clinicians using these new digital health tools. 😌 BURNOUT CURE [21:32]: "It just, for me, feels lighter at the end of the day." Hear how Ambient AI is solving clinician burnout by reducing hours of documentation. This allows doctors to connect with patients directly instead of focusing on a keyboard. 🚀 LEADERSHIP BLUEPRINT [34:20]: "That same model just needs to be rinsed and repeated for wearables. End of story." Dr. Civello provides a simple blueprint for healthcare leaders. He advises building a dedicated remote care team for wearables, modeled after successful pacemaker clinics. CHAPTERS: 00:00 - How Wearables Are Transforming Early Disease Detection 01:45 - The Evolution from Fitness Trackers to Clinical-Grade Wearables 03:03 - The Most Important Biometric Signals Clinicians Track Today 07:58 - Why FDA Approval Matters for Remote Monitoring and Streaming Care 11:21 - Why Clinicians Must Learn AI to Use Wearable Data Safely 15:54 - How ChatGPT Is Changing Patient Engagement in Healthcare 19:08 - Ambient AI as the Fastest Solution to Physician Burnout 23:03 - How AI ECG Detects Hidden Disease Before Symptoms Appear 25:26 - Why Healthcare Must Shift from Episodic Visits to Continuous Care 26:53 - Why Wearables Will Replace Traditional Remote Monitoring Programs 28:46 - The Future of Smart Home Sensors and Passive Health Monitoring 33:39 - What Healthcare Leaders Must Build Now for AI-Driven Care 37:23 - The Best Wearables for Clinical Monitoring vs Performance Tracking 42:19 - How AI and Wearables Will Reshape the Future of Clinical Practice 🔗 CONNECT WITH DR. CIVELLO: * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennethcivello/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennethcivello/] * Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/wearable-integrated-healthcare-7340505300036177922/ [https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/wearable-integrated-healthcare-7340505300036177922/] #WearableTech #HealthcareAI #DigitalHealth

Half of America Has No Cardiologist — Software Bridges That Gap with Juan C. Jimenez

Juan C. Jimenez addresses the heart care crisis in the United States where half of all counties have no specialist to read heart scans. There are more monitors than ever but less time to look at the data. Software must help doctors find sickness before it spreads. AccurKardia turns simple heart signals into powerful medical tests, finding kidney failure and valve issues using current watches and patches. With AccurKardia, primary care doctors can now spot risks that once stayed hidden - a shift that moves clinical tests into the home and helps doctors save lives. 🎯 KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS: 🚀 MASSIVE GROWTH [02:59]: "We believe software and the current compute capacity is the only way to be able to perform work class analysis on those ECGs and empower primary care." We do not have enough cardiologists to fix the care gap. Computer power helps local clinics treat people without sending them miles away to a city hospital. 🛠️ SIMPLE INTEGRATION [10:36]: "We can plug and play exactly in your workflows that clinicians, cardiac technicians and IDTF already have." New technology does not mean buying new machines. See how this system works with the watches and sensors you already use every day. ⚠️ DEADLY SILENCE [19:11]: "50% of cases of aortic stenosis are found postmortem." Doctors often miss valve disease until it is too late. Watch this part to see how software finds the signal before a patient dies. CHAPTERS: 00:00 - The Cardiology Desert and the Care Gap 02:27 - Scaling Heart Care with Computer Power 04:17 - Hidden Insights in Simple Heart Scans 06:17 - Enterprise Scale Tools for Heart Data 09:55 - Using Software Instead of New Hardware 15:04 - Home Kidney Testing in the Living Room 19:08 - Finding Silent Killers in Heart Valves 23:31 - Predicting Heart Failure with Software 25:59 - Verifying AI Results to Build Trust 32:20 - Linking Heart and Kidney Health Signals 38:22 - Better Care for Local Primary Clinics 🔗 CONNECT WITH JUAN C. JIMENEZ: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcjimenezbosques/ • Website: https://www.accurkardia.com/ #HeartHealth #HealthTech #AIinMedicine

From Corporate Engineer to Medtech CEO: The Brutal Truth About Startups with Nathan Friedman

Nathan Friedman spent two decades at medical giant W.L. Gore before walking away to solve a problem that affects one in ten femoral access procedures: visual inspections to find internal bleeding often miss the issue until a patient loses nearly a liter of blood. Nathan founded HemaSense to replace this manual method with a wearable patch that detects subcutaneous bleeding in real-time through impedance changes. Moving from corporate engineer to startup CEO required Nathan to build a new skill set from scratch, starting with a basic search on how investment structures work. He details how he validated the clinical need by talking directly to physicians and identified the $18,000 cost savings that convinces hospitals to adopt new technology. ⚠️ FOUNDER CONFESSION [10:42]: "I came back to my room that night... and one of the first questions I plugged in there was 'What is the difference between private equity and venture capital and angel investors?' Because I was like, ‘What is this? I don't even know what these terms mean.’" Watch as Nathan explains how he systematically filled his knowledge gaps to secure funding and build a viable business model. 📊 COST ANALYSIS BREAKDOWN [21:21]: "When one of these bleeding complications occurs, it's an average of two extra days in the hospital. And the latest data that we have is that it's about $18,000 in direct cost to the hospital when these patients stay that long." See exactly how HemaSense targets a specific economic driver to align patient safety with hospital profitability. ✅ VALIDATION BLUEPRINT [28:04]: "We want to make sure that we don't just have that feedback cycle once, but we are having that feedback cycle continuously through our development... We pick up the phone or we go drive down to the place that we have these partnerships set up and we ask the people who are going to be using it." Nathan details why continuous clinical validation beats building in isolation every time. CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Introducing Nathan Friedman and His Path to MedTech Innovation 01:35 - From Gore to Entrepreneurship and Building Startup Mindset 04:54 - Making the Leap to Founding HemaSense 07:53 - How HemaSense Formed and the Problem It Set Out to Solve 10:13 - Learning Funding Strategy and Navigating Investor Expectations 13:12 - Closing the Pre-Seed Round and Early Technical Milestones 14:44 - How the HemaSense Wearable Patch Detects Subcutaneous Bleeding 17:46 - Real-Time Monitoring, Alerts, and Clinical Workflow Integration 19:28 - Current Standard of Care Limitations and Hospital Cost Burdens 23:08 - Expanding Into Ambulatory and At-Home Monitoring Applications 27:00 - Building Strategic Clinical Partnerships for Product Validation 30:36 - What Keeps a Startup CEO Up at Night 34:16 - Key Lessons for Founders Entering MedTech Innovation 🔗 CONNECT WITH NATHAN: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanfriedman/ • HemaSense: https://www.hemasense.com/ #MedTech #StartupFounder #HealthcareInnovation

CEO MasterClass on when to Sell or Scale

Patients often endure lengthy, multi-hour cardiac surgeries, only to return home with minimal support or clear guidance on detecting serious, serious complications, leaving them, and their physicians, in a precarious state of uncertainty regarding their health and next steps.  This alarming gap in post-discharge care, where individuals are essentially sent home with "pretty much nothing" except a "good luck" message, deeply troubled Medtronic veteran Jaeson Bang, revealing a critical unmet need in modern healthcare. Driven by this profound concern, Jaeson founded Future Cardia, dedicated to developing a disruptive implantable cardiac monitor.  Learn how Future Cardia is transforming cardiac care, from addressing critical patient needs to pioneering innovative monitoring technology. Join Jaeson Bang, CEO of Future Cardia, here today as he shares his journey from Medtronic veteran to MedTech entrepreneur, revealing insights into product development, effective fundraising, and navigating the complex path to commercialization. 🚨 THE POST-SURGERY ABANDONMENT CRISIS [05:23]: Concerned by the number of patients leaving multi-hour cardiac surgeries with no real monitoring or guidance? "Patients going through these multi-hour surgery, sometimes up to eight hours... We're sending him home with pretty much nothing and maybe a ‘good luck’ kind of situation. Discover the alarming gap in cardiac care that motivated the founding of Future Cardia. 💡 THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PARADOX [11:44]: Uncover the counterintuitive truth about developing products that seemingly everyone desires but ultimately rejects. "We had all these great features that the physician wanted it... we asked the patients…Everybody wanted it. And when we spent all this time and effort, bring it to them, nobody wanted it! That was really strange to me.”  Learn the critical lesson Jaeson learned about true market need versus perceived desire in product innovation. 🤝 MASTERING PARTNERSHIP POWER [34:19]: Discover the simple yet profound philosophy behind building unbreakable alliances in business. "Foster the relationship... the vendors that I work with are my true partners… they go out of their way to help me.” See how p___ 00:00 - Future Cardia’s Implantable Heart Monitor Innovation 02:38 - Combining ECG and Heart Sounds for Breakthrough Diagnostics 03:28 - Career Journey From Medtronic to MedTech Entrepreneur 06:28 - Ambulatory Care and the Future of Patient Monitoring 07:21 - Turning Physician Feedback Into Simple, Actionable Products 11:30 - Funding Challenges and Creative Capital Raising in MedTech 17:42 - Building Trust Through Transparency With Investors 19:40 - FDA Approval Timeline and Commercialization Strategy 21:23 - Rethinking MedTech Marketing and Competing in a Crowded Market 26:53 - Sustainable Growth, Sales Strategy, and Future Outlook 31:44 - Leadership Lessons on Transparency and Resourcefulness 33:36 - Loving the Work and Building Partnerships That Last 🔗 CONNECT WITH JAESON BANG & FUTURE CARDIA: Jaeson Bang: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaeson-bang-1a29aa1a/ Future Cardia: https://www.futurecardia.com/ #FutureCardia #CardiacMonitoring #MedTechStartup