Conformal Medical, Inc.
Conformal® is a privately held medical device company that designed the CLAAS System* to seal the LAA to reduce the risk of stroke, without the need for anticoagulants.
*Currently in clinical testing and not available for sale.
Provide a solution that overcomes the limitations of first-generation devices and transforms LAAO to an outpatient procedure.
Improve the patient’s experience with a short, same-day procedure using an implant that consistently delivers a customized, anatomic seal without the need for general anesthesia or TEE.
Design an LAAO System that expands the treatable population due to its ease of use and ability to be performed without general anesthesia or post procedural anticoagulation.
Chairman & Chief Medical Officer
Aaron Kaplan is an active medical device entrepreneur who has been on the founding team of a number of venture-backed medical device companies including Conformal Medical, Tryton Medical, LocalMed and Perclose (acquired by Abbott). He has consulted to many medical device companies and was an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Three Arch Partners. Aaron is a practicing interventional cardiologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and a Professor of Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. In addition, he directs the Synergy Clinician-Entrepreneur Fellowship and chairs the Dartmouth Device Development Symposium. Prior to joining the Dartmouth Faculty, Dr. Kaplan was Director of Interventional Cardiology at the Palo Alto VA and served on the Faculty at Stanford University. Aaron has more than 65 peer-reviewed papers, 45 U.S. Patents, and was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors (Class of 2015). He received a B.S. in Engineering Sciences (Cum Laude) from Tufts University, M.D. from Wake Forest University, medical training at Northwestern University and cardiology training at Stanford University.
President and CEO
James is a seasoned medical device executive with over three decades of senior leadership expertise in strategic planning, commercial excellence, and M&A. Prior to joining Conformal, Reinstein served as President, CEO, and board member at Saranas Inc. where he was responsible for raising capital, scaling the organization, and initiating enrollment of its ongoing clinical trial. Preceding his time with Saranas, he served as the President, CEO, and board member for several other medical device and diagnostic companies including Cutera Inc., Drawbridge Health Inc., and Aptus Endosystems Inc. Earlier in his career, Reinstein also served as Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer for Cyberonics Inc (now LivaNova) and Vice President, Asia Region for Boston Scientific. Additionally, he is a general partner with Palo Alto Medtech Advisors. Reinstein holds a bachelor’s in business administration, marketing, from the University of Georgia and Executive Management training from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.
Chief Financial Officer
Melissa has over 20 years of finance leadership experience in the medical device industry. She has held leadership positions with both public and private companies and brings a proven track record of strong financial strategy execution. Melissa recently served as the CFO of Neuspera Medical, a start-up medical device company developing implantable technologies for patients battling chronic illness and was a core team member as the company initiated the second phase of its U.S. IDE clinical trial. Prior to Neuspera, Melissa served as CFO of the Medical Division of Halma PLC, where she led strategy, capital and resource allocation, and merger and acquisition activity, delivering on growth and profitability goals for the division. Earlier in her career, Melissa held executive leadership positions at LivaNova and Becton Dickinson.
Chief Scientific Officer
Carol has over 30 years of experience in the development of medical devices, primarily transcatheter cardiovascular implants. She has extensive experience in emerging technologies, with a focus on structural heart repair, including devices for closure of intracardiac defects, LAA occlusion, and heart failure. Carol has taken several cardiovascular implants from concept through commercialization including a drug/biologic/device combination and is also experienced in intellectual property strategy and development. Carol has been a consultant in the medical device field since 2011 and the Chief Scientific Officer of Conformal Medical since 2016. Prior to that, for 16 years she served as Vice President of R&D for NMT Medical, a publicly held company focused on the transcatheter repair of intracardiac defects. She started her medical device career at C.R. Bard, where she held several technical and management positions over the course of 10 years. Carol is an inventor on over 30 issued US patents, has authored several articles and book chapters, and lectured on medical device design. Carol holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and an M.S. in Plastics Engineering, both from the University of Massachusetts/Lowell.
Vice President of Engineering
David has over 25 years of experience in the design, development and manufacture of medical devices, and has successfully demonstrated the early problem-solving skills necessary to launch companies and bring new technologies to the market. He has been employed in increasingly senior engineering positions at CR Bard, Focal, Boston Scientific, Confluent Surgical, GI Dynamics and Conformal Medical. His experience includes the development of products for cardiology, radiology, general, thoracic, spinal and cranial surgery, gastroenterology, urology and gynecology. David holds over 40 US issued patents and has co-authored several technical publications. He has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
Vice President of Therapy Development
Dana has over 30 years of commercial experience in the medical device industry. He has held leadership positions in Field Sales, Marketing, M&A integrations, and Commercial Operations. Prior to joining Conformal, Dana was a Sales Director and the Director of Commercial Operations at Abiomed (Mechanical Circulatory Support (Impella) acquired by Johnson and Johnson in December of 2022). Prior to Abiomed, Dana was at Boston Scientific Corporation (BSX) for 25 years in various commercial roles of increasing responsibility. He was the commercial lead of BSX’s integration of British Technology Group (BTG) in 2019. The $4.2B acquisition of BTG is the second largest acquisition in BSX history. Earlier in his career, Dana lead the marketing efforts at Biosphere Medical (acquired by Merit Medical) which was the first device approved for the embolization of uterine fibroids. He has broad market experience in Interventional Cardiology, Interventional Radiology, Vascular Surgery, and Cardiac Surgery. He has a BA in History from Framingham State University.
Vice President of Regulatory and Quality
Steve has over 30 years of experience in the medical device industry. He has held leadership positions in Regulatory, Quality, Clinical, and Operations. Steve recently served as COO at BioVentrix, a company focused on less invasive therapies to treat the failing left ventricle, and drove the FDA and pivotal US IDE clinical trial strategy. Before BioVentrix, Steve held various leadership roles at Sirtex Medical, Anika Therapeutics, Infraredx, and Biogen. He began his career in research at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Steve has a BA in Psychology from Saint Anselm College.
Vice President of Operations
Aurelio boasts an extensive 30-year tenure within the medical device industry, where he has held pivotal roles as an operations leader across several well-established companies such as Cutera, Venit (a Boston Scientific company), Medtronic, and Aptus Endosystems. His proven expertise lies in successfully expanding manufacturing processes and consistently delivering top-tier products that cater to patient needs, all while ensuring the company's financial and compliance objectives are met.
Aaron Kaplan, MD
Chairman & Chief Medical Officer
James Reinstein
CEO & President
George Fazio
Director - President & Chief Executive Officer, Corvia Medical
Joshua Phillips
Director - Founder & Managing Partner, Catalyst Health Ventures
Scott Ward
Director - Chairman, President & CEO, Cardiovascular Systems, Inc.
Tasneem Dohadwala
Board Observer - Founding Partner, Excelestar Ventures
Evan Norton
Board Observer - Founding Partner, SPRIG Equity
Shephal Doshi, MD
Director, Cardiac Electrophysiology Pacific Heart Institute, CA
William Gray, MD
President, Lankenau Heart Institute, PA
Devi Nair, MD
Director of Cardiac Electrophysiology & Research, St. Bernards Medical Center, AR
Christopher Ellis, MD
Director, Cardiac Electrophysiology Laboratory and Director, LAA Closure Program, Vanderbilt Health, TN
Conformal Medical is looking for highly-skilled professionals to join our team. We are driven by the challenge of developing innovative medical devices that improve patients’ lives. If you share in this passion, please contact us!