People In Brief
This article was originally published in The Gray Sheet
Executive Summary
Syncardia: Maker of the Total Artificial Heart names Michael Garippa president July 2. Garippa was former CEO of CardiacAssist, developer of the TandemHeart ventricular assist system. Rodger Ford will continue on as Syncardia's CEO. The firm decided to make the change after the start of an FDA pre-market trial of its Freedom portable driver and after receiving CE approval to market the device in Europe. According to Syncardia, Garippa took CardiacAssist from an R&D firm that had lost an aggregate $50 million to a successful firm with over $6 million in net income in the past 24 months. He is replaced at CardiacAssist by Kraig McEwen