Kate Levchuk

Kate Levchuk, also known as KateGoesTech, is a Futuristic blogger and a Transhumanist with a background in International Relations. Born in Ukraine, Kate has lived in 6 countries, currently resides in London, and considers herself a global citizen. She is working in technology, advocates science and progress, and writes sci-fi in her spare time.

Leslie Hammermüller

Leslie is a clinical researcher with more than 15 years of experience in clinical data collection and evaluation. She started as a data manager for international clinical trials in a global CRO. Thereafter she joined a medical device manufacturer as Clinical Affairs Manager with various clinical responsibilities and is now providing consultancy services for medical device companies to help transition to MDR.

Erin White

Erin, a veteran of medical device sales, has a long history of exceeding sales targets. She’s worked in the US, Canada and throughout international markets and for multiple companies. Currently she drives sales performance in Europe Middle East and Africa in both direct and Distributor markets for the HydraFacial company.

Sina Kahen

Sina Kahen is a consultant, keynote speaker, and author. He helps companies to innovate and start-ups to breakout. He facilitates workshops on conversational AI and the future of healthcare. He has written two books and his latest book is Ideas.

Sina currently works in the medical devices and AI industries, with experience spanning sales, design, and innovation.

In his part-time work, he gives keynotes, runs workshops, and has worked as a consultant for several organisations including Google, BBC, O2, and Novateur Ventures.

Sina has also written books on religion and philosophy, including his latest book Ideas.​

​Sina graduated as a Biomedical Scientist, and has an MBA from Imperial College Business School.

Andrew Cowen

Andrew is a high functioning dyslexic with a creative background: contemporary dancer, photographer, producer/director. He has been an entrepreneur, MD & founder of four companies: Current company activity Future Care: A health tech / medical device start-up, developing medical grade, wearable health and wellness remote diagnostic devices for public & Private sector, seniors and infants 0-24months. Past companies: 1) multi-media & marketing promotions, 2) database publishing of industry wide events, 3) a domiciliary, home care agency incorporating sophisticated technologies as and when appropriate, with specialisms in dementia support.

Future Care’s approach is to develop and ecosystem not just a device. The technology needs to be connected to something and end in an action. The tech should not require the service user to have to engage with the technology. The technology should respond automatically (ML & AI) to incidents alerts. In our end-to-end, holistic ecosystem, incident alerts and 24×7 remote diagnostics health and wellness data are reviewed by a medical or paediatric triage located in call monitoring centre. All data interfaces with NHS, Social Services & GP’s and other 3rd partiers.

He has also tried to establish a health care business in China 2012-14. He loved the experiences but could not find a partner despite generating amazing opportunities and invited as VIP guest speaker at several Chinese public, government and private conferences and events.

Nick Skaer PhD

Nick has been a life sciences researcher, inventor and technology translator for over 25 years with 18 years’ as a medtech company Founder, Director, CEO and CSO. He has secured >£25 million in equity investment and grants awards and s a named inventor on 37 granted patents. In 2008, he co- founded Orthox Ltd with surgeon, Prof Oliver Kessler, to commercialise tissue regenerative medical devices using FibroFix™, a revolutionary new biomaterial platform formed from the protein, silk fibroin, which he co-invented. There are active FibroFix™ programs in cartilage, bone and hernia repair and approvals have been secured for lead product FIbroFix Cartilage to enter European clinical trials in 2022.

Nick graduated in Biosciences from Oxford University and completed a Marie-Curie sponsored PhD in molecular genetics at Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France and post-doctoral studies at Cambridge University. He then led the development of FibroFix™ at Oxford Biomaterials Ltd, first as CSO and then as CEO for the 4 years prior to founding Orthox. Nick is a founding Director of two other equity financed medtech ventures, Newrotex Ltd. and Suturox Ltd.

Jeff McBride

Jeff McBride has over thirty years’ experience in ensuring that automated health care technologies are compliant with all current regulatory requirements.

Widely acknowledged subject quality and regulatory matter expert in mobile health applications. Utilising expertise honed through working with the ‘Clearblue’ brand of female reproductive health medical device products and with Biocartis, has been at the forefront of the proliferation of mobile applications or “apps,” beginning in 2012 with the device “Oncoassist,” the application becoming one of the first “Health Apps,” to be certified as a medical device authorised to affix the “CE” mark to their product. There followed subsequence success with other leading edge mHealth devices, Medopad, Hinge Health, Advanced Ophthalmic Systems, Atlas Biomed, plus many others.

Gaining regulatory recognition for clients Medical Devices from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the UK, the Health Products Regulatory Agency (HPRA) in Ireland and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the USA and many other similar regulatory agencies worldwide.

Obtaining International Standards accreditation and certification for clients Medical Devices to ISO13485 and ISO27001.

As a result of his pioneering success in this market almost ten years ago, Jeff has been in ongoing demand from early stage tech entrepreneurs and development agencies including the UK DIT, Enterprise Ireland, and industry representative groups. As one of the principals of European Device Solutions, Jeff’s experience is now available to your company.

Diarmuid Cahalane

Diarmuid Cahalane is an internationally recognised expert in the successful deployment of novel healthcare technologies in a fully compliant manner. He is a member of the advisory board of CODEX4SMEs, a European Union programme to which he was appointed by “Curam,” the Irish National Medical Technology Centre. He is also an Enterprise Ireland (Irish Government Development Body) Mentor to early stage companies, with a particular focus on life science companies. His expertise is regularly called on by third-level institutions including Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, and University College Cork where he has frequently participated in guest lectures around regulatory compliance and digital health.

In 1996, he and a colleague established a regulatory compliance consulting firm which specialised in Computer Systems Validation and also Medical Diagnostic Laboratory Certification, initially to CPA standards, but subsequently to ISO:15189.

Having grown this company to a workforce of 17 people, he was then approached with a view to establishing a spin out company from University College Cork, which had developed a novel risk stratification predictive screening test for Preeclampsia. The inventor of this test was Professor Louise Kenny, who is now the Executive Pro Vice Chancellor of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of Liverpool.

He, along with two colleagues, established Metabolomic Diagnostics which began the process of commercialising Professor Kenny’s test. This involved raising significant investment of over €8 Million to date in both non dilutable and investment funding and involved the recruitment of PhD., and MSC level personnel from across Europe to build a scientific team and establish a biorepository in Hoffmann Park, Little Island, Cork, in a former Pfizer production facility. Diarmuid’s passion towards alleviating the impact of Preeclampsia was recognised by the Preeclampsia Foundation in the United States, who invited him to participate in a biomarker consortium which included the US Food and Drug Administration, Quest Diagnostics, and Key Opinion Leaders including the then director of the office of Invitro Diagnostics And Radiological Health, Alberto Gutierrez PhD.

Having worked with his co founders to raise significant funding, and completed the recruitment of a science team along with the implementation of a recognised, certified, quality management system, (ISO:13485), Diarmuid stepped back from the day to day running of the company to focus on a growing demand for his skills in the area of e-health, mobile health, digital pathology, and laboratory compliance. He is still a significant shareholder and continues as a director and board member of the company.

As part of his support of early stage companies especially in his area of expertise, digital health, IVDs, and medical device compliance, he has been frequently asked by Venture Capital companies, the Irish Government, and the European Union to assist in linking early stage companies with large multi-national organisations to ensure success. This has involved him visiting the UK, mainland Europe, the gulf region and the United States to meet with regulatory authorities, funders, patient advocacy groups to assess and evaluate novel technologies and contribute towards the creation of new standards which will allow doctors and healthcare providers to deploy the next generation of technologies for the benefit of patients globally. He most recently visited the United Arab Emirates where he visited the Dubai Future Accelerator with the Irish Ambassador, H.E. Aidan Cronin. He also participated in the launch event for the Office of the National Co-Ordinator For Healthcare Information Technology (ONC) in the United States which was chaired by Bill Gates and Ted Turner.

Diarmuid is now making his experience and extensive network available to IVD and Medical Device companies, and medical diagnostic laboratories throughout Europe via European Device Solutions.

Philip Low PhD

Dr. Philip Low, PhD, a friend of the Medical Devices Group and returning keynote speaker (2016, San Diego), is Chairman, CEO & Founder of NeuroVigil, an international neurotechnology conglomerate with operations in the US, Canada, Europe and soon in South America and the Middle East.

His investors include the top firms in the US, including the top law firms, as well as prominent entrepreneurs, from Irwin Jacobs (founding Chairman and CEO of Qualcomm) to Howard Morgan (first investor in Uber) to Elon Musk (founder of a number of transportation companies and former chairman of Tesla, who was terminated as advisor in December 2021). His advisors include Nobel Laureates. His senior team members include former key executives and officials at Amgen, Novartis, Qualcomm, Roche, and even McDonald’s (though he is himself a vegan), and the Canadian government.

Born a Canadian citizen in Vienna, Austria, Philip spent his early years in Paris, the South of France and Switzerland. He graduated from high school years early and immigrated to the United States to study at the University of Chicago where he focused on Pure Mathematics and Physics, invented new neurosurgical techniques, and discovered mammalian-like and even neocortical brain patterns in birds, stunning the field of Neuroscience. While still a teenager, he discovered a compound’s previously unknown therapeutic promise in women’s health at Harvard Medical School – in nine weeks! He went to the Salk Institute on the personal recommendation of Francis Crick, Nobel Laureate of DNA fame, where he produced a one-page PhD dissertation which revolutionized dynamic brain activity mapping. By his twenties, he had already founded NeuroVigil and was already a Stanford faculty member and MIT research affiliate.

He created, chaired and presided over the 1st International Congress on Alzheimer’s Disease and Advanced Neurotechnologies, held in Monaco in 2010, and the Francis Crick Memorial Conference, held in Cambridge, UK, in 2012.

He has interacted with / advised four countries, the US Armed Forces, NASA, other agencies, the US Congress and the White House, including two US presidents, and is officially considered a ‘person of extraordinary ability’, whose presence in the US is deemed in the national strategic interest, by the US government which granted him an ‘Einstein’ EB-1 (E-16) Green Card within two weeks of the interview (he is a proud Canadian and has refused US citizenship as well as any financial support from the US government).

At the request of the late NeuroVigil advisor Stephen Hawking, Dr. Low conceived a non-invasive brain-based communication program, with an ALS patient spelling as early as 2013 without any implant.

Philip, who founded NeuroVigil with ~ $250K of credit card debt at 28% interest during the worst recession in 80 years and who owns about 90% of NeuroVigil and has an arsenal of industry-defining patents, is the inaugural (and thus far only) recipient of the Jacobs-Rady Pioneer Award for Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship given to outstanding bona fide scientists leading their companies as Chairman and CEO, and was recognized as one of the Top Young Innovators in the World by MIT, a recognition shared with the founders of Facebook and Google. NeuroVigil’s seed and Series A valuations were at over 2 and 2.5 times Google’s and Facebook’s seed and Series A valuations, combined, respectively. The Washington Post recognized the company, which won the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Venture Challenge and had Roche and Novartis as its first clients, as one of the ‘Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Health Care’ and the Financial Times called Dr. Low’s Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, the first document recognizing consciousness in non-humans, ‘at the leading edge of one of the biggest modern-day shifts in human thought.’ The New York Times calls it ‘an unprecedented document’ in human history, and his personal brain monitor, which won the CONNECT Most Innovative New Product Award (Life Sciences – Diagnostics and Research Tools), ‘an innovation which will change your tomorrow’. His technology led TIME Magazine to state: ‘Low hopes to make checking your brain activity as easy as checking your blood pressure’ and NEWSWEEK to declare “For the first time in history, the wonders of technology have allowed us to ‘hear’ the noises our nerves make when they talk to one another.”

Michelle Sullivan

From her LinkedIn profile: Currently on a mission re Environmental Sustainability. Net zero a must.

20 plus years in Medical devices: sales, management, marketing, Market Development & Market Access.

PG Diploma in Health Economics York University gave me a platform to move into Health Economics, Policy and Reimbursement.

My work in Public Affairs is now linked to my focus on Environmental Sustainability. I chair the ABHI Sustainability group, Vice-chair the Commercial policy group, and sit on the Board of HealthTech Ireland.

Passed course from University of Cambridge course on Business and Climate Change: Towards Net Zero Emissions – Very inspiring!