Leading Healthcare Authority and Public Health Advocate to Advise Developer of Tissue-integrated Sensors for Real-time Monitoring of Body Chemistry
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., June 7, 2017 — Profusa, Inc. announced today that William Frist, M.D., former U.S. Senate Majority Leader and globally acclaimed healthcare advocate, joined the company’s board of directors.
Dr. Frist, partner and chairman of the executive council of the health services private equity firm of Cressey & Co., represented Tennessee in the U.S. Senate for 12 years, where he served on both the Finance and HELP committees. His leadership was instrumental in the passage of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act.
“Dr. Frist is a pioneer in the healthcare industry, and a leading authority on public health policy,” said Ben Hwang, Ph.D., chairman and CEO of Profusa, Inc. “His extensive experience as a legislator, business executive, and medical professional will be extremely invaluable as we expand our commercial capabilities, and continue to progress our technology and product development in the U.S. and abroad.”
Dr. Frist is actively engaged in the business, as well as the medical, humanitarian, and philanthropic communities. He serves on the boards of the Robert Wood Foundation (the nation’s largest philanthropy dedicated solely to health) and Kaiser Family Foundation, among others. Additionally, he serves on the boards of publicly traded companies AECOM, Select Medical Corporation, and Teladoc. He co-founded Aspire Health, the country’s largest non-hospice, community-based palliative care organization that seeks to revolutionize advanced illness care.
“Profusa is on the leading edge of developing transformative technology that promises to make a huge impact on the management of personal health and disease,” said Dr. Frist. “Real-time monitoring of body chemistry may represent a revolutionary advance for wound healing, and may have a huge impact against chronic diseases like diabetes that affect more than 70 million individuals in the U.S. alone, accounting for more than $2 trillion dollars in healthcare costs. I have tremendous respect for Profusa’s team and board members, and I look forward to working with them.”
In addition to his tenure as the U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Dr. Frist is a nationally recognized heart and lung transplant surgeon with more than 20 years of practice in clinical medicine. After graduating from Princeton University and Harvard Medical School, he completed surgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford, and went on to found and direct the Vanderbilt Multi-Organ Transplant Center, where he performed over 150 heart and lung transplants.
About Profusa, Inc.
Profusa, Inc., based in South San Francisco, Calif., is leading the development of novel tissue-integrated sensors that empower an individual with the ability to monitor their unique body chemistry in unprecedented ways to transform the management of personal health and disease. Overcoming the body’s response to foreign material for long-term use, its technology promises to be the foundational platform of real-time biochemical detection through the development of tiny bioengineered sensors that become one with the body to detect and continuously transmit actionable, medical-grade data for personal and medical use.
CE Marked for sale in the EU, Profusa’s Lumee™ Oxygen Platform is an Investigational Device limited by U.S. law to Investigational Use.