April A. Marano, Co-Founder

Ms. Marano is a primary inventor in the fields of drug delivery, interventional cardiology, and pulmonology. She has invented and developed leading edge technologies for use in continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII). Her patent portfolio includes the first subcutaneous infusion set with a flexible Teflon® needle cannula, the SofSetTM, and the first insulin compatible infusion catheter, the PolyfinTM Set that she developed in her 10 year tenure at MiniMed Technologies, Inc. In 2000 she licensed proprietary technology that launched Emphasys Medical Inc., a bay area start-up, dedicated to the minimally invasive treatment of emphysema. She now holds over 30 patents. In the span of her career Ms. Marano has held executive positions in various companies, and directed the implementation of numerous medical device product introductions.

In 1987, Ms. Marano held the position of Director of Engineering & Manufacturing for MiniMed Technologies, Inc. where she led the design team that created and engineered the MiniMed III hospital pump, the smallest three channel hospital pump available for use today. In this capacity, she was responsible for all medical disposable product engineering and production, for both domestic and Pacific Rim operations. Ms. Marano designed and built a 20,000 sq. ft. facility, where she staffed and ran all support functions including engineering, manufacturing, quality assurance, quality control, material planning, purchasing, and inventory levels. While at MiniMed she also held the title of Director of Material, where she successfully implemented MiniMed’s first Material Requirements Planning system. During this time she reduced excess inventory by approximately 20 million dollars, and improved production output by 63%.

In 1996, she served as Vice President of Operations for PercuSurge Inc. where she created and staffed the manufacturing, material, and quality functions. During her employment at PercuSurge, she co-invented and developed the GuardWire™ system, a device used to prevent distal embolization and stroke. In 2000, Ms. Marano became Vice President of Engineering for Futura Medical. There she built an engineering team, that facilitated the development, and launch of a line of drug delivery products in Singapore within a 24 month period. In this capacity Ms. Marano built and staffed an engineering laboratory and created a pilot production clean room facility where the first devices were built, tested, and qualified. She was responsible for the scheduling and building of a multi-million dollar tooling and automation system that was then cloned for multiple overseas production locations by her staff.

Ms. Marano is considered an industry expert in cost modeling for medical disposable products. She has developed her own modeling technology, and with it has provided detailed cost models for numerous products in various stages of development and identified key cost drivers such that appropriate action can be taken to maintain or improve cost goals. In this capacity, Ms. Marano has consulted for both start-up ventures, and also for Fortune 500 companies, demonstrating and implementing techniques used to reduce purchased material costs, production waste, and improve product cycle times.

Ms. Marano holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology in industrial design, and has completed post graduate course work at the California Institute of Technology in industrial engineering. Previous to her position at MiniMed Technologies Inc. Ms. Marano held various senior management positions for Becton Dickinson from 1980-1984 in Pasadena CA and the Mattel Toy Company in the Barbie engineering group from 1978-1979 in Hawthorne, CA. At Mattel she received her first training in cost of goods analysis for high volume products.

Mr. Thomas Knotts is an accomplished technical consultant in the field of electrical engineering. He brings with him extensive engineering experience in the area of low power applications, remote communication, and micro controller programming.

Mr. Knotts has experience across a variety of products including networking, medical devices, micro displays, optical mice, timing interval analyzers, DACs, packaging, testing, mixed-signal IC and PCB design. He is the inventor of many innovative technologies, holds numerous patents, and has published journal articles on a variety of topics including digital to analog conversion. He has worked for companies such as Agilent Laboratories, Intel, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, and is a key inventor of CSII patch pump technology for MedSolve. Most recently he was the recipient of Agilent Life Sciences Ned Barnholt Innovation Award for 2011. Mr. Knotts has a MSEE degree from University of California, Berkeley, CA.