Outset Medical, a commercial-stage company delivering new technology into the $13 billion global dialysis market, has announced the appointment of two new executives: Martin Vazquez, who joins the company as chief operating officer, and Chad Hoskins as vice president, commercial and corporate strategy.
 
“The leadership at Outset Medical is passionate and focused on their mission to transform the experience of dialysis for patients and enable greater efficiencies in care for clinics,” said Vazquez. “I share this passion and look forward to helping lead the organization as it becomes a global rapid growth company.”
 
Vazquez is a seasoned medtech executive with more than 25 years of manufacturing, end-to-end complex supply chain management, product development, and quality assurance experience, both in capital equipment and high-volume disposables. Most recently, he served as vice president, North America operations and global sales and operations planning at Abbott Rapid Dx (formerly Alere), where he was responsible for a global supply network of rapid diagnostic test factories. Previously, he served as worldwide vice president, manufacturing management at Becton Dickinson where he led electromechanical and instrumentation manufacturing operations. Prior to BD, he was a senior operations leader at CareFusion overseeing a global network of manufacturing facilities, including a single facility producing over one million infusion sets per day.
 
Chad Hoskins brings a successful track record of developing and executing strategies to commercialize innovative medical products. Before joining Outset Medical, Chad was division vice president, heart failure therapies at Abbott, responsible for globally marketing the Mechanical Circulatory Support (formerly Thoratec) and CardioMEMS franchises. Prior to Abbott, he was vice president of marketing for St. Jude and also held commercial leadership roles at Thoratec before its acquisition by St. Jude. Earlier in his career, Chad was a consultant with McKinsey & Company.
 
“Despite over 84 million dialysis treatments each year at a Medicare cost of over $33 billion, the dialysis equipment and service model has changed very little over the last 30 years. There is a clear need for technology innovation aimed at cost reduction and a meaningfully improved patient experience,” said Hoskins.
 
Today, hemodialysis is costly and complex to provide. Outset has developed a technology solution aimed at easier, lower cost dialysis. The Tablo System functions like a “dialysis clinic on wheels,” enabling dialysis without the infrastructure and labor constraints that currently burden the provision of care.
 
Tablo is the first device to combine simplicity, versatility and operational efficiency. The same platform can be used in a range of care settings from dialysis clinics to hospitals to extended care facilities.
 
“The ability to scale both with speed and control is critical when tackling an enormous market like dialysis. Chad and Martin will play an instrumental role in ensuring we maximize the growth opportunities ahead for Tablo across multiple market segments both in the U.S. and abroad,” said CEO Leslie Trigg.
 
The Tablo System
Outset Medical’s Tablo System is CE-marked and has been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in acute and chronic care settings. Through design simplicity, wireless medical informatics and a novel integrated, on-demand water purification system, Tablo is aimed at driving dialysis cost reduction in dialysis clinics, hospitals and extended care facilities. A U.S. clinical trial is underway to enable the use of Tablo at home.
 
Designed to look and feel more like a consumer product than a medical device, Tablo’s compact size and form factor are intended in the dialysis clinic setting to allow patients to set up and monitor their own treatment. Called “in-center self care,” this modality allows providers to think differently about staffing and gives patients more control over their schedule and treatment experience.
 
Tablo also removes the need for conventional clinic infrastructure. The system connects directly to tap water, purifies it and generates dialysate all in real-time, thereby obviating the need for expensive centralized water and dialysate production. By disconnecting dialysis from traditional “bricks and mortar” infrastructure, Tablo expands how and where dialysis can be efficiently delivered, and reduces costs for providers.