Masimo Corp. Chief Executive Joe Kiani is relinquishing his baton at the Patient Safety Movement Foundation, a nonprofit he founded in 2013 to reduce the number of preventable deaths in hospitals.
David Mayer is now the foundation’s chief executive, Kiani said during the organization’s seventh annual summit last month at Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort & Spa. Mayer was previously vice president for quality and safety at MedStar Health, a 10-hospital health system that is the largest in the Baltimore region.
Michael Ramsay, chairman of the department of anesthesiology and pain management at Dallas-based Baylor University Medical Center and a professor at Texas A&M University, will replace Kiani as chairman after the 2020 summit. Kiani will remain involved as a board member.
“I had known for the last seven years that this is to be a doctors’ movement,” Kiani told the Business Journal at the summit, noting that he “doesn’t want [it] to be about myself, my thing [but] have everyone be involved.”
The nonprofit said “90,146 lives were saved in 2018, thanks to the efforts of more than 4,710 hospitals committing to patient safety and 89 healthcare technology companies that have signed the open data pledge” to share health information.
On the provider side, UCI Health and Children’s Hospital of Orange County were recently awarded the foundation’s five-star hospital ranking for implementing 29 Actionable Patient Safety Solutions, or processes designed to provide more comprehensive patient safety program.
Former President Bill Clinton was the keynote speaker for the seventh year in a row.
The organization’s goal is zero preventable patient deaths by 2020.
Kiani, an Iranian immigrant, in 1989 founded Masimo, a maker of noninvasive patient monitoring devices. The Irvine-based company (Nasdaq: MASI) reported $855 million to $858 million in preliminary total revenue for 2018. It has a $6.5 billion market cap as of press time.
Paradigm Eye Shift
Allergan PLC (NYSE: AGN), which suffered a serious blow when it was unable to protect the patent exclusivity of its second top money maker, dry-eye drug Restasis, could make up some of those losses in its eye unit if its clinical-stage drug-eluting eye stent pans out.
While the company’s U.S. headquarters are in New Jersey, its aesthetics and eyecare businesses are based in Irvine.
It recently announced positive results from a second third-phase trial evaluating its Bimatoprost SR, a biodegradable medication-delivering implant for the reduction of pressure in patients with certain types of glaucoma.
“With the long duration of effect observed in this study, Bimatoprost SR can be a significant paradigm shift for the treatment of glaucoma,” Dr. Randy Craven, associate professor of ophthalmology at John Hopkins University and chief of the Wilmer Eye Institute in Bethesda, Md., said in a company statement.
The multicenter 10-month study, still ongoing, is comprised of 528 subjects.
Glaucoma is a progressive disease characterized by elevated eye pressure—uncontrolled, elevated eye pressure causes damage to the optic nerve and eventual blindness. It affected 130 million people globally last year, according to Allergan.
The company said it plans to file for the Food and Drug Administration approval this year.
The Nestlé Touch
Supplement maker ChromaDex Corp. has signed a deal with nutritional health product maker Nestlé Health Science S.A.
The Irvine-based company announced a license and supply agreement with Nestlé Health Science. The deal includes a $4 million upfront payment to Chromadex, milestone payments, and tiered royalties.
ChromaDex’s flagship product Tru Niagen, based on its patented nicotinamide riboside ingredient, is a vitamin B3 supplement that the company promotes as boosting overall energy and having anti-aging benefits.
“We are quite impressed with the science supporting Tru Niagen and the excellent work done by the team of professionals at ChromaDex,” Nestlé Health Science Chief Executive Greg Behar said. “We see this innovation as an important element of our product portfolio.”
The Swiss company, founded in 2011 as the healthcare nutrition business of Nestlé Group, is focused on improving health through managed nutrition, according to the company website. It employs 3,000 worldwide.
The agreement allows Nestlé to include Tru Niagen in certain products.
ChromaDex shares as of press time traded at around $3.39 and a $184 million market cap. The shares are 41% below their 52-week high of $5.75 last February.
