CardioMech Appoints President and CEO

CardioMech AS has appointed Richard Nehm as president and CEO, and Mark Novotny as board chairman. Nehm and Novotny join the company alongside founders Jacob Bergsland, chief medical officer, and Nikolai Hiorth, chief technology officer.
 
Nehm is a seasoned medical device professional in the structural heart market with nearly 20 years of leadership experience in sales, marketing and business development across large and small companies. His expertise in product development and commercialization within interventional cardiology, cardiac surgery and structural heart will help drive the development of the CardioMech program. Nehm previously held leadership roles with Boston Scientific Corp., Tendyne Holdings Inc. (Abbott) and ATS Medical (Medtronic). Nehm is a native of Roseville, Minn., and is currently living in Alingsås, Sweden.
 
“There are more than 400,000 patients around the world that suffer from a leaky mitral valve due to prolapse or flail that are at a high-risk for a cardiac surgery,” said Bergsland, M.D., a cardiac surgeon. “We are pleased to welcome Rick and Mark to help us accelerate the development of our catheter-based technology that is designed to treat these patients with a transfemoral/transseptal access without the risks associated with open-heart surgery, cardiac arrest and the heart-lung bypass machine.”
 
“I am thrilled to join this extraordinary team and lead CardioMech down the path towards commercialization of this profound technology. Our objective is to significantly improve the standard of care for very sick patients suffering with mitral valve prolapse and flail,” said Nehm.
 
Novotny joins CardioMech with 28 years of experience in medtech, where he has held leadership roles across cardiovascular, critical care and spinal surgery throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe. Novotny is currently the president and CEO of Spinal Stabilization Technologies based in San Antonio, Texas, and has previously held leadership roles at Boston Scientific Corp. and CeloNova BioSciences Inc.

“Transcatheter chordal repair is a hot segment with two exits in the last 11 months. The CardioMech device is highly differentiated, and we will build significant shareholder value in a short period of time. I am excited to join this team and guide this exceptional technology to market,” said Novotny.
 
Headquartered in Trondheim, Norway, CardioMech AS is a privately held company that is developing a transcatheter alternative to cardiac surgery for the placement of artificial chords for the mitral heart valve. The CardioMech device is in the early R&D development phase and is not available for sale.