Founders of healthcare startups have the potential to bring new life-changing technology to patients, but must navigate a complex landscape of prototyping, partnerships, funding and regulation. Hear from founders and investors in the healthcare space on how they have improved the outcomes for their businesses. This panel will discuss trends in growth and funding in the healthcare ecosystem.

CHAIR

Kyle J. Myers Independent Consultant FDA (retired) (United States)

Kyle Myers recently retired as Director and Senior Advisor in the Division of Imaging, Diagnostics, and Software Reliability at the US Food and Drug Administration's Center for Devices and Radiological Health. Her division specialized in evaluating the safety and effectiveness of new healthcare devices being brought to market in the US. Dr. Myers earned her PhD in Optical Sciences from the Univ. of Arizona College of Optical Science. She is an independent consultant and resides in Phoenix, Arizona.

PANELISTS

Rachel Kuperman Founder and CEO Eysz, Inc. (United States)

Rachel Kuperman is a Pediatric Epileptologist who ran the Pediatric Epilepsy Program at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, Oakland for ten years. While trained in physics, and neurophysiology she grew frustrated by the lack of data used to make critical decisions about diagnosis, and management of epilepsy leading to no significant improvement in outcomes in thirty years. The cardiologist had Holter monitors, the endocrinologists had remote glucose monitoring but the neurologist at best had a patient generated seizure diary that was less than 50% accurate. While she could use powerful data generated in the hospital through complex brain mapping surgeries to understand where a child’s seizures were coming from… on a day-to-day basis in the clinic she grew frustrated and disillusioned because her patient’s lives were a black box. She founded Eysz with the goal of using patient generated data to transform the outcomes of people with neurological disease starting with epilepsy.

Bill Hyun Venture Partner Genoa Ventures (United States)

Bill Hyun is a Venture Partner with Genoa Ventures. With more than twenty-five years of life science and technology experience. He is a respected expert in both basic research and clinical lab technology development. At the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), Bill directed one of the largest academic core facilities in the world with a strong concentration on cytometry and genomic technologies implementing a myriad of research, translational and clinical applications. His academic career included joint appointments at UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, three honorary doctorates, and authorship of over 100 peer-reviewed publications.

Ryan Shelton Co-Founder and CEO PhotoniCare (United States)

Ryan Shelton is CEO and co-founder of PhotoniCare, a medical device company that has developed a handheld imaging platform that uses light to see through tissue. PhotoniCare's first product, the OtoSight Middle Ear Scope, is a handheld device that can see through the eardrum to enable physicians to make better decisions about antibiotic and surgical intervention. He has led the company as CEO since its inception, raising over $18M in dilutive and non-dilutive funding to advance the company’s objectives. Dr. Shelton received a PhD in Bioengineering from Texas A&M University in 2012. He has won multiple awards for entrepreneurial and technical achievement and is passionate about PhotoniCare’s current efforts improving the management of chronic middle ear infections in children, because of the frustrations he's faced as a parent of his own children dealing with these chronic infections and hearing loss.

Francesco Tantussi Scientific Advisor Foresee Biosystems (Italy)

Francesco Tantussi is an expert on optics and plasmonic with particular attention on exploiting the light for sensing, mapping and modifying elements at nanoscale. With his activity in IIT his experience has then shifted more to the application of nanophotonic to the biological field, especially for high-performance sensing and mapping of bio samples. He also is inventor co-author of three patents and published more than 60 papers on peer-review impacted journals; ; H index = 24. Dr. Tantussi is involved in many running EC projects (FET-Open I-Gene, FET-Open NanoBright, FET-Open ProID), and has been involved in several other concluded projects (FET-Open PROSEQO (2016-2019); ERC CoG, Neuro-Plasmonics (PI Francesco De Angelis, 2014-2018), E2-Plas, EC FP7: NanoSci-E+ (2009-2012)).