Health Tech: Dr. Yacov Geva of G. Medical Innovations On How Their Technology Can Make An Important Impact On Our Overall Wellness

An Interview With David Leichner

There are two levels of hackers — the ones that hack into hardware and the ones hacking into software. We do everything in our capacity based on HIPAA regulations and the patents we created to protect data.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Yacov Geva, President and CEO of G Medical Innovations.

Dr. Geva is a well-known pioneer in the industry of medical technologies and remote patient monitoring services. As the founder of LifeWatch AG (former Card Guard AG and Card Guard Scientific Survival Ltd.) he successfully led the company to an IPO. Up until 2014, Dr. Geva was a member and the Chairman of the Board of Directors and Corporate CEO of LifeWatch AG. During 1979 to 1989, Dr. Geva served as a Chief Mechanical Engineer with Vishay Israel — a subsidiary of Vishay Intertechnology, USA. Dr. Geva holds a B.Sc in Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, a Ph.D. (with honors) in Business Administration from the International School of Management, Paris and an honorary doctorate from Oxford Brooks University. Dr. Geva is also a senior member of the royal society of medicine in the UK (RSM).

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

I was born in 1949 in Israel in the northern city of Tzfat. I grew up as a “moshavnik”, a moshav is a village where every family has its own agricultural or industrial business. Mostly people raised cattle, chickens or grew fruit and vegetables. It was a very healthy way to grow up. I also served 3 years in the army and after my service went to the Technion.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

There are a lot of interesting stories, but the most interesting one happened in 1976 when I developed a dot matrix print head for the US Navy. I was invited to come to the US with my family as a consultant and my wife didn’t want to go. The head of the division, Bill, was calling me every Friday at 5:00 pm to check and see if my wife had changed her mind yet. It took a year for her to change her mind. Suddenly, she agreed and I told Bill the good news. He said a contract was on the way. After 10 days the contract didn’t arrive, so I decided to call the division head to see where the contract was. His secretary answered and when I asked Bill, she asked me a strange question, she said, “Is this a private call or a business call?” I was so confused, I told her it was me; I talked to Bill all the time — she knew me. She whispered into the phone that Bill had just died in a plane crash on the Potomac River. I was stunned, my wife and I had a very close relationship with William, we knew his family. It was terrible. A few days later Bill’s successor called me and said the offer was still on the table. In the end, I said no thank you to the position but that experience made me realize that relationships make all the difference.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I am grateful to Mike Harari for the help he gave me. Mike was second in command in the Mossad. He helped me raise money outside Israel and he shared his contacts with big pharma companies. He was a big help to me and was my best friend.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

I always say to young entrepreneurs, if you don’t have the marathon runner attitude, don’t start. Don’t ever start because you will fail at the very beginning. You have to know that starting a business, especially a technology based company, is a 24/7 job and requires from you the attitude of a marathon runner. If you’re a sprinter, forget it, you will not reach the finish line.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

1. Believe in what you are doing. Don’t change direction every Monday because somebody said something negative or shiny. Be very focused and determined on what you’ve decided to do. You’ve already analyzed the market, you have the answer, be determined and focused and don’t be distracted by 100 different things.
2. I’ve always surrounded myself with the best people. If you are surrounded by people who are much better than you are, then you will be seen as the best CEO. If you bring mediocre people around, the people that only tell you what you want you hear, then your success is in question.
3. Coming up with great ideas. Come up with an idea that you understand will solve a lot of problems in the healthcare business. You need to be able to see the market 10 years ahead. You can’t just see what the market needs tomorrow morning. My company has been developing products that are 10 and 15 years ahead of the industry which helps us be recognized as industry pioneers.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the technology or medical devices that you are helping to create that can make a positive impact on our wellness. To begin, which particular problems are you aiming to solve?

We are in the cardiology world, the sleep apnea world, the asthma world, and the CHF world trying to reduce the number of days of hospitalization that are required for all those conditions and support moving the care of patients to the home. We are helping the industry go from hospital care to clinical care to home care. Patients will always get much better in their natural environment as opposed to a hospital which is a sad and lonely place for many. Hospitals are not hotels.

How do you think your technology can address this?

Our technology can either on demand or auto detect heart issues. We are saving lives every day at G Medical Innovations. Patients today can now walk around with our auto detect and auto send device. This happens in real time. Sometimes the patient doesn’t even know that the algorithm has just detected an issue that a medical professional needs to review. The only way to save a patient’s life, if the patient is in a serious situation and doesn’t know they are in the serious situation, our device detects in seconds any deterioration and we will dispatch 911 to the patient and simultaneously let their doctor know about it. This is the life saving impact that our technology can have.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

Years ago, at Sheba Hospital I took a stress test on a bicycle and the nurse measured my blood pressure with a simple device when there were already computers that could do the measurements. I asked her what she was measuring but she wouldn’t explain it to me, she said I wouldn’t understand. Immediately after that, I went to a cardiologist to ask him how the electrical activity of the heart works. His name was Avi Caspi from Kaplan Hospital he was trained in South Africa.

I was able to connect with Avi and I asked him to explain how the electrical activity in the heart worked. He gave me a 1,000-page book and told me to read it and then call him. I had no choice, I had to read something. Everything related to physics and mathematics in the book was easy for me but with the medical details, I had a lot of questions.

After I read the book, I came back to Avi and he told me that usually a baboon could understand in 20 minutes what he was about to explain. He told me I looked a little smarter than a baboon, so probably in 15 minutes I would understand. Thankfully it was easy for me to understand what he explained and I asked him if he wanted to be the medical advisor for the medical device company I was going to start.

That nurse at Sheba Hospital was the trigger. I started in the early 90s developing devices and software and I was very lucky to have customers immediately. Our partners understood the financial potential and the potential to help a lot of people. The early interest from big groups was big and they would say, “send us all your devices!” They wanted whatever we had.

In 1999 we went public in Switzerland at $120M Swiss pre-money and $160M Sw post-money and $11M in sales at that time. A month later, I acquired LifeWatch for $11M — providing an end-to-end solution and grew the company to $130M. I acquired it for $11M and sold it for over $300M.

How do you think this might change the world?

It’s a very simple answer — how many hospitals do you have to have to hospitalize all the patients that need help without technology? In fact, 85% of people that come to the physician, or the ER have no illness. They don’t feel well so they go to a doctor, but they’re not sick. The doctor tells them to take Tylenol. At the hospital you wait 6 or 7 hours to be told you have nothing wrong. I’m of course not talking about the real emergencies and critically ill patients. Truthfully, most illnesses can be treated at home if you have the right technology. Here’s a good example, you have in the US a company called Visiting Nurses. Guess how many miles those Visiting Nurses did in 2019 to visit patients? 119 million miles. What did they do when they visited patients? Measuring blood pressure, body temperature, maybe something else, but those things the patient or caretaker could have done themself if they had the technology at home. Most patients can serve themselves; they only need the right technology to do so.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

I don’t see drawbacks to this technology. Everything is HIPAA compliant, all medical information is confidential. The technology allows information to be protected easily. We utilize the same protection that banks use when they transfer money.

Can you share a few best practices that you recommend to safeguard your technology or medical devices from hackers?

There are two levels of hackers — the ones that hack into hardware and the ones hacking into software. We do everything in our capacity based on HIPAA regulations and the patents we created to protect data.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

Search for solutions that are not yet available. There are a lot of technologies and a lot of approaches by different companies to sell us products we don’t need, or products that are unregulated. It is important to always look for new solutions and new innovative technologies. Search the market first so you know what’s available and what’s not available. Search for patents so you don’t waste time developing anything that is already patented.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

There are a lot of people I’d like to meet. I’d love to have a private meeting with Warren Buffett. In our world, as my father used to say, everything starts from financing, and when you understand the world of financing you can grow a company. I understand financing very well and have 2 PhDs. But Buffett did something special. He developed it into a scientific level even though his way of investing is the simplest you can think of. It goes back to having the attitude of a marathon runner. Warren Buffett is a marathon runner when he invests. He sits on his investment. He’s a very interesting character I’d like to meet.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Visit our website https://gmedinnovations.com/

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.

About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.