Since stepping down from Masimo Corp. in 2024, Joe Kiani has remained steadfast in his commitment to advancing patient safety.
In 2012, Kiani founded the Patient Safety Movement Foundation (PSMF), a nonprofit dedicated to reducing the 200,000 preventable hospital deaths each year. It strives to achieve zero preventable patient deaths by 2030. The foundation on Feb. 27 hosted its 12th annual summit at the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa in Dana Point, convening hospital leaders, medtech innovators and policymakers together, including former First Lady Jill Biden.
“For her to give her time to this means a lot,” Kiani told the Business Journal. “I think she’ll hopefully galvanize more people to take action to improve patient safety.”
Last Friday’s event centered on results from an active pilot being conducted at 700 hospitals using safety protocols recommended by a 2023 report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), to which Kiani was appointed by former President Joe Biden.
“Some of the things we recommended is to align the incentives for hospitals to implement evidence-based practices that can eliminate medical errors,” Kiani said.
Kiani, a long-time Democrat supporter, has also had former President Bill Clinton at past PSMF events.
The Report
The President’s Advisory Group working on patient safety was co-led by Kiani and Microsoft’s Chief Scientific Officer Eric Horvitz.
The report found that Medicare patients suffer an adverse event in one out of four hospitalizations, with one third of those having “catastrophic outcomes.”
It made four main recommendations, including establishing federal leadership dedicated to patient safety and implementing evidence-based solutions to eliminate the top causes of harm, including sepsis, medication errors and central line-associated bloodstream infections. The other two recommendations focused on partnering with patients and accelerating research.
Kiani said that Rady Children’s Hospital Orange County, formerly CHOC, implemented evidence-based practices, and as a result, hasn’t had any preventable deaths over the past six years.
“That’s a big deal,” he said. “If everyone did it, we’d be close to zero right now.”
Willow Laboratories Update
Masimo, which Kiani founded in 1989, last month announced it has entered an agreement to be acquired by Danaher Corp. for $9.9 billion.
Since the proxy battle that led to his ouster from the board and, consequently, his stepping down as CEO, Kiani has kept busy with his latest diabetes-focused venture, Willow Laboratories.
The company just launched the second version of its app called Nutu, designed to help people live healthier lifestyles and prevent the progression of prediabetes to Type 2 Diabetes. The newest version of the app is said to be more intuitive and automated, according to Kiani.
“With the first version, we got some incredible results that showed people who used it lost weight and reduced their HbA1C,” a blood test measuring blood sugar levels over three months, Kiani said.
Based on the results, Kiani said that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gave the company preliminary approval to join its National Diabetes Prevention Program.
Moving forward, the company will launch three clinical trials to prove its efficacy and create a sales force to make the product available to major corporations, insurance companies and governments, Kiani said.
Outside of Willow, Kiani’s time is spent on his other company Like Minded Labs.
He’s CEO of the Santa Monica-based medical technology company, which recently released a video conferencing platform called Coresee that’s similar to Zoom or Microsoft Teams, but more powerful, with higher resolution, according to Kiani. Coresee offers 4K resolution, 60 frames per second and can have 16 different videos active at the same time.
He’s also on the boards of several healthcare companies, including Clairity, the developer of an AI-powered risk assessment platform for breast cancer, and SMSbiotech. Kiani was appointed to the board of the San Diego regenerative medicine company last week.
“I think they’ve got some incredible drug molecules that could really help a lot of the many disease states,” Kiani said.
