SpineGuard Announces Three Promotions

SpineGuard, a designer, developer, and marketer of disposable spinal devices, announced three promotions within the company to help the firm become operationally profitable by the end of next year.

Olivier Frézal, Patricia Lempereur, and Steve McAdoo have been given new responsibilities at the French company.

“We are very proud to announce these internal promotions as they reward highly talented members of our team with significant experience: Patricia, Olivier and Steve all contributed greatly to the development of our company over many years,” SpineGuard CEO Stéphane Bette said. “Through their new responsibilities and expanded scope, they will further support me in executing on our strategic goals in particular to reach operational profitability.”

Frézal will now lead SpineGuard’s innovation strategy, intellectual property, and development of new products. He will also supervise manufacturing and regulatory affairs and quality assurance activities. With 17 years of R&D and management experience in the spine industry, Frézal is one of the original developers of the DSG technology and has been instrumental in advancing the technology over the past 11 years. Before working on the DSG technology, Frézal led research activities sponsored by companies such as Medtronic Sofamor Danek or LDR Medical and worked at SpineVision, where he designed implants and patented instruments. Frézal graduated in the top 1 percent of an established French engineering school (ENSAM Paris Tech, France) and also obtained a masters degree in biomechanics (Institut de Biomécanique Humaine G. CHARPAK, France). He has been with SpineGuard since 2009.

“I am thrilled by this new position,” Frézal said. I have been involved in the technical activities of the company over the last years and I have the privilege to lead a strong, dedicated and experienced team. Our current research projects and subsequent patent filing activities will materialize the potential of our DSG technology.”

Lempereur will be in charge of international sales and international marketing, and take the lead in supervising worldwide marketing tools and programs. She has been with SpineGuard since its inception in 2009. Lempereur has more than 17 years of experience in the industry, including 15 years in spine. After beginning her career as head of mission in charge of CRAFT project at ANRT, she has held various positions in the marketing departments at SpineVision and Medicrea. Lempereur has a master’s degree in biotechnology and management from the ISTM School Noisy-Le-Grand, France.

“I look forward to taking on these expanded responsibilities as we continue to develop our technology,” Lempereur said. “Over the years, I have been intimately involved in the international sales process and feel confident in embracing this new role. With our marketing and sales teams, we will continue to provide the same quality of support and service to our customers and we are poised to positively impact our international business in line with the new strategy of the company.”

McAdoo will now manage the American subsidiary SpineGuard Inc., replacing Bette, who was appointed CEO on July 13. He will continue to lead global initiatives in business development. McAdoo joined SpineGuard in January 2016 as vice president of business development with the global responsibility for driving industry partnerships to further leverage the company’s core technology, Dynamic Surgical Guidance (DSG); deploy new applications and initiate new revenue streams. He has more than 28 years of global marketing, sales management and business development experience in the medical device industry, including spine, general orthopedics, trauma, cardiovascular and urology. Over the course of his career, McAdoo has held roles in corporations such as Medtronic plc, Smith & Nephew plc, and Biomet as well as in startup firms like Danek Medical, Cerapedics, and SURx.

“I am very excited to assume my new role within SpineGuard as we continue to leverage our DSG technology in medical device markets, drive additional growth, and progress toward profitability,” McAdoo said. “We will continue to work with our customers and partners in the mission of making surgery safer through implementation of DSG technology, a differentiating factor in the market.”

Founded in 2009 in France and the United States by Bette and Pierre Jérôme, SpineGuard’s mission is to make spine surgery safer by bringing real-time digital technology into the operating room. Its primary objective is to establish its proprietary DSG technology as the global standard of surgical care, starting with safer screw placement in spine surgery and then in other surgeries. PediGuard, the first device designed using DSG, was co-invented by Maurice Bourlion, Ph.D., Ciaran Bolger, M.D., Ph.D., and Alain Vanquaethem, biomedical engineer. It is the world’s first and only handheld device capable of alerting surgeons to potential pedicular or vertebral breaches. More than 55,000 surgical procedures have been performed worldwide with DSG-enabled devices. Numerous studies published in peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals have demonstrated the multiple benefits that PediGuard delivers to patients, surgical staff, and hospitals. SpineGuard is expanding the scope of its DSG platform through strategic partnerships with medical device companies and the development of smart instruments and implants. SpineGuard has offices in San Francisco, Calif., and Paris, France.