This story has a conflict of interest, but my editors said that I could write this column item if I disclosed it immediately to readers.
My father, Jim Corbett, is chief executive at CathWorks Ltd., an Israeli firm with an Aliso Viejo headquartered office; it is changing how coronary artery disease is diagnosed—from the outside in. Its CathWorks FFRangio diagnostic tool won approval from the FDA at the end of last year.
Last week, the company announced that Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach and St. Joseph Hospital in Orange will offer the tool to its patients in the coming months.
This approval follows other top line hospitals that are using the tool, such as Stanford Medical Center in Northern California, Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles and Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego.
So far this year, CathWorks has filed a new patent, completed $30 million in Series C financing in February led by Deerfield Management and became a finalist in OCTANe’s September High Tech Awards.
The company is also a candidate for the Business Journal’s Innovator Awards scheduled for September. (I had no say in that!)
An international clinical trial proved its technology to be just as effective as a traditional catheter-based measurement. The CathWorks tool is noninvasive and wire free, with coronary branch analysis in a real-time, 3D rendering of what was once a 2D X-ray image.
Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, claiming 375,000 lives annually; the disease can trigger arrhythmias or low blood pressure leading to irreversible cardiogenic shock. Over 1 million heart catheterizations are performed each year.
President Guy Lavi and Chief Technology Officer Ifat Lavi in 2013 co-founded CathWorks, which has its headquarters in Tel Aviv and its global commercial headquarters in Aliso Viejo.
Corbett, a former president of Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE: BSX), started his career in sales and marketing at the predecessor of Edwards Lifesciences Corp. (NYSE: EW). Corbett, who started at CathWorks in 2017, has also served as chief executive of companies including Home Diagnostics Inc., Vertos Medical Inc., Alphatec Spine Inc. (Nasdaq: ATEC) and Ev3, which was acquired by Covidien—which itself was bought in 2015 by Medtronic PLC.
CathWorks has hired sales vice president Paul Kapsner, who held executive positions at Medtronics, and marketing chief Ramin Mousavi, who was senior director of transcatheter heart valves marketing for Edwards.
