VerAvanti Mobilizes Notable Industry Advisors and Expands Go-to-Market Leadership Team

REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- VerAvanti, a developer of a new class of scientifically-advanced solutions to help physicians find answers to treat strokes and heart attacks that often strike without warning, is leveraging deep industry ties from its founding team, to build a highly experienced and industry-recognizable board, clinical advisors, and leadership team to strategically guide the company as it readies for a planned 2018 market launch, pending FDA 510(k) premarket clearance.

VerAvanti Founder and CEO, Gerald McMorrow stated, "A key advantage that VerAvanti President Russell Garrison and I bring to this venture is years of entrenched industry experience and connections in the medical device market that we plan to leverage. We are hand-picking some of the industry's brightest leaders that include a Board and Clinical Advisory Team who can provide critical counsel and experience to actively bolster our expanding leadership team's go-to-market efforts."

VerAvanti President Russell Garrison elaborated on the importance of this early team, "VerAvanti is marshalling the human capital and resources needed to leverage the millions of dollars and decade of industry research already devoted to the development of this technology, to create a viable medical device so that physicians and the healthcare systems they work with have the potential to more proactively diagnose and treat individuals at-risk for stroke and cardiovascular events." Garrison added, "When this is achieved, VerAvanti, its shareholders, and employees will fulfill a shared vision of saving more patient lives." 

In addition to McMorrow and Garrison, the VerAvanti Board includes Seattle medical device industry pioneer and luminary, Dr. David C. Auth, Ph.D., P.E., who currently serves as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CoAptus Medical Corporation, and earlier founded Heart Technology, Inc., now a division of Boston Scientific Corp. In addition to being an entrepreneur and businessman, Auth has been an Affiliate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington since 1985 and is a physicist, renowned scientist, and inventor of several commercially successful products in the medical device field including the Rotablator, and is a co-inventor of the NovaSure System. 

The VerAvanti Clinical Advisory team includes four highly respected physicians who each bring an unprecedented depth of related industry experience and research knowledge to the company.

• Mark Reisman, M.D. is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington, who is also President of the Board of Directors of the Seattle Science Foundation, and has been the Principal Investigator on more than 50 clinical trials and remains an active investigator on a multitude of trials with a focus on structural heart disease and coronary artery disease.
• William Lombardi, M.D. is an expert in cardiac catheterization and interventional cardiology, who is an associate clinical professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology, and the director for Complex Coronary Artery Disease Therapies in the UW Medicine Regional Heart Center.
• John L. Peterson, M.D. MHS, is a renowned Cardiologist and Director of Cardiovascular Research at Swedish Heart & Vascular Institute, who specializes in Interventional Cardiology.
• Luis Savastano, M.D., is a member of the Department of Neurosurgery at University of Michigan Medicine who had conducted Scanning Fiber Endoscope research and has clinical interests in neuroanatomy, experimental neurosurgery, and translational research.

Early strategic hires to the VerAvanti leadership team include:

• Mark Kennedy, Executive Vice President U.S. Sales, who is recognized for opening new capital equipment markets while hiring and nurturing sales teams to achieve year-over-year growth. Previously as EVP of Verathon USA Sales, Kennedy played a key role on the leadership team who propelled the company's worldwide expansion.
• Andrea Chen, Vice President MEMS Division, pioneered MEMS sensor commercialization for PCB Piezotronics, and acquired her broad background in semiconductor fabrication from Rockwell, which she applied to MEMS fabrication at the Washington Technology Center, developing MEMS chips for a variety of products including telecommunication switches, bioMEMS devices, aerospace pressure sensors, laser systems, and noise attenuators.

VerAvanti is actively recruiting engineers and quality professionals, as it readies the company for its 2018 market launch.

About VerAvanti
Founded in 2013, privately-held VerAvanti is using advanced science and automation to commercialize the world's first Scanning Fiber Endoscope (SFE), to help physicians close treatment gaps and proactively identify interventions for the 200,000 individuals (U.S.) who suffer ischemic strokes due to an unknown cause¹. Protected by more than 30 patents licensed by VerAvanti, the SFE is a micro-imaging catheter equipped with an extreme depth of focus camera that provides physicians a previously unseen surgical view into hidden intravascular anatomy, enabling more proactive diagnosis and treatment of individuals at-risk for stroke and cardiovascular events. Visit VerAvanti to learn more and review scientific papers and SFE images.

Photos available upon request.

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SOURCE VerAvanti