Danek Medical Founder Leading SpineGuard Board

There’s a new chairman on board at SpineGuard. Alan Olsen, founder andpresident of Danek Medical Inc., has been chosen to lead the startup company’s board of directors.

Olsen currently is CEO and board chairman of Atlas Spine, a Jupiter, Fla.-based spinal implant company. He has been an active investor and director in six privately held companies primarily in the medical device industry, according to a news release from SpineGuard. Olsen also has served as chairman or a board member with charitable organizations dedicated to spinal cord injuries, foster children advocacy and the arts.

Olsen formed Danek Medical in 1980 as an orthopedic soft-goods company, using the names of family members for the moniker. He sold the company five years later, a move that eventually transformed the firm into the larger Danek Group Inc. In 1993, Danek Group shareholders approved a merger with a privately held French company called Sofamor S.A., headquartered in Rang-du-Fliers, France. The new company bore a new name—Sofamor Danek Group Inc.—and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1999, Sofamor Danek Group merged with Medtronic Inc., and called itself Medtronic Sofamor Danek until 2006, when it became better known as Medtronic’s Spinal and Biologics business unit.

Olsen has been a member of SpineGuard’s board of directors since November 2009.
Company executives believe his corporate leadership experience and orthopedic industry background will help drive growth at the year-old firm. “Over the past six months since he became a Director of SpineGuard, Alan has steadily and thoroughly integrated himself into the business and has already made important contributions to our organizational development,” said Pierre Jérôme, SpineGuard founder and CEO. “He has demonstrated his enthusiasm to help elevate SpineGuard beyond the startup phase. His extensive governance experience and strategic insights will be invaluable to SpineGuard going forward.”

In a prepared statement, Olsen said he was impressed by SpineGuard executives’ commitment to improving the safety of spine surgery. “In the short time I have been working with SpineGuard’s senior management and its board of directors, I have been very impressed by their passion and focus to make spine surgery safer with their pipeline of products,” he said.

Leading the company through the post-recession marketplace won’t be Olsen’s only responsibility at SpineGuard. He also will help spread implementation of the firm’s pedicle screw placement technology—a disposable, wireless surgical instrument called PediGuard. The handheld device, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2005, enables surgeons to accurately place pedicle screws during spinal procedures. The device has been used in more than 11,000 procedures worldwide, according to SpineGuard. Last month, the company signed an agreement with MBA to exclusively distribute its PediGuard device in Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. MBA is an international medical device marketing and distribution organization specializing in spinal treatment products.

PediGuard prevents pedicle screw misplacements by analyzing the electrical conductivity of surrounding tissues in real time through audio and visual signals. The device detects changes in tissue type and alerts surgeons to the change during preparation of the screw site. The criticality of pedicle screw placement has been highlighted by published reports showing that high rates of misplacements can lead to such serious complications as quadriplegia.

Headquartered in Paris, France (with U.S. offices in San Francisco, Calif.), SpineGuard was founded last year by Jérôme and Stéphane Bette, former executives at Medtronic Sofamor-Danek and SpineVision, a company that develops and markets spinal implants and instruments. Last spring, the pair used part of the $11 million SpineGuard received in first-round funding to acquire the PediGuard unit from SpineVision.