I recently had the opportunity to speak to Pathway Medical's CEO Paul Buckman. In 2008, Pathway Medical Technologies received FDA approval for the Jetstream G2 for peripheral atherectomy. This was followed by approval for arterial thrombectomy in 2009. The Jetstream G2 enters an atherectomy field which features EV3's Silverhawk and CSI's Diamondback system.
Mr Buckman is a former protege of who some consider the father of atherectomy, John Simpson,former CEO of Foxhollow technologies. Mr Buckman recalled being hired by Simpson and learning some critical lessons of device development. Including the continual need to welcome feedback from the end user in an attempt of improve device function and patient outcomes. This important philosophy appears to be a cornerstone of the company culture at Pathway Technologies.
Mr Buckman brings a wealth of experience and corporate experience in the medical device space. From the Pathway Medical Technology website:
Paul brings more than three decades of medical industry leadership to Pathway Medical, where he recently served as chairman of the Board of Directors. He joined the company from Devax, Inc. where he served as chief executive officer and board member since December 2006. From August 2004 to December, 2006, Paul was president of the Cardiology Division of St. Jude Medical, Inc., a diversified medical products company. Prior to St. Jude Medical, he served as chairman of the Board of Directors and chief executive officer of ev3, LLC, a Minnesota-based medical device company focused on endovascular therapies that Paul founded and developed into an $80 million business. Paul’s 30 years in the medical device industry include 10 years at Scimed Life Systems, Inc. and Boston Scientific Corporation, where he held several executive positions before becoming president of the Cardiology Division in January 2000. Paul currently serves as a board member for SentreHeart, Inc and has held posts on the boards of Velocimed, Inc., where he was a co-founder, EndiCor, Inc., Microvena, Inc. and Micro Therapeutics, Inc. Source
On the financial side, Mr Buckman states that Pathway recently obtained a fresh round of cash infusion which allows them to focus on the busines at hand and sell some of the recently released devices. His company vision appears to be to create a strong peripheral vascular device with a broad range of device offerings. With regards to the landscape of the atherectomy space, Mr Buckman offers a view that there remain a large number of physicians who are not comfortable with atherectomy and the room for growth outside of the currently offered atherectomy devices is substantial. And the number of patients with infrainguinal disease treated with atherectomy is relatively small.
From the short conversation, it appears that Pathway is headed for years of success.
I encourage physicians using the pathway device to offer feedback on device function, current applications and future iterations
