Loading ...Tripoli biomedical entrepreneur recognized by Obama
We want to empower pioneers like Ziad Sankari,” U.S. President Obama said in a speech on global entrepreneurship in May. “Today he’s improving the way we respond to cardiac incidents, which will have enormous ramifications not just in places like Lebanon but potentially all around the world,” Obama continued. “So, thank you, Ziad, for helping to save lives.”
The high-level shoutout was all the more impressive, as the Tripoli native, who will turn 30 this year, was one of just five entrepreneurs highlighted.
The core product of Sankari’s company, CardioDiagnostics, is a 120-gram device that offers real-time, continuous analysis of the wearer’s heart ECG to detect arrhythmias (irregular beatings).
While CardioDiagnostics began operations two and half years ago, Sankari traces his inspiration to losing his father to a heart attack at age 17.
“I wanted to create a technology to monitor heart patients 24/7, [with] an alert system if something happens,” he told The Daily Star. “The vision was there after my father’s death, but I didn’t know how to get to it.”
More pieces of the puzzle fell into place after he won a Fulbright scholarship to attend graduate school in the United States.
Earning two master’s degrees in engineering at Ohio State University, Sankari researched signal processing; specifically, how to analyze the brain’s ECG signals to detect problems.
“It became clear that you can take an idea from just a concept … all the way to the market,” said Sankari, who got involved with the business school’s technology entrepreneurship institute.
His team won the institute’s business plan competition for their product measuring tissue oxygenation – useful in wound care diagnostics. Their venture went on to attract close to a $1 million in investment, though Sankari left early on due to conflicting visions.
Source: www.dailystar.com.lb