MedTech Innovator Asia Pacific LIVE

Langston Suen is the CEO of Opharmic Technology, a medtech company founded based on his invention on non-invasive ultrasound ocular drug delivery. Under his leadership, Opharmic is now offering turnkey solutions to pharma partners around the world to adopt this cutting-edge technology in their new or existing pipelines in ophthalmology and beyond.

Having raised over $215 million in venture capital for healthcare and life sciences startups, Ash is the Founder and CEO of Sapyen, an at-home male fertility diagnostic company built for the 200 million aspiring fathers around the world who are struggling to conceive and feel stigmatised.

Coming from having previously led the United Nations’ efforts to mitigate the detrimental humanitarian consequences of the Arab Spring, Ash is a seasoned strategist with experience across startups and venture, diplomacy, and commercialisation. In 2018, Ash co-led the University of Melbourne’s efforts to launch Australia’s first Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer fellowship before taking on a role managing the tech investment portfolio at Australia’s largest equity crowdfunding company, Birchal.

Dr Fong Ming Koh is a Principal at LYFE Capital, a global healthcare investment platform dedicated to advancing the healthcare landscape through strategic value creation. LYFE’s diverse investment portfolio spans the entire healthcare sector, encompassing therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, and emerging sub-sectors across North America and Asia. Prior to joining LYFE, Fong was the Head of Life Sciences at Heritas Capital, a Singapore-based healthcare-focused impact fund manager. A developmental biologist by training, he has extensive research experience spanning pluripotent stem cells, epigenetics and cancer. Dr Koh received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from the University of California, San Francisco.

Daniel is a career CFO/COO who has directly led 29 investments, totaling more than $500 million. He has also orchestrated divestments of a similar scale and arranged hundreds of millions of dollars of debt financing for various companies in the US, Asia, South America, and the Middle-East. He was an early innovator in several private asset-backed investment trusts between 2007 and 2011, and the driver behind the establishment of a small $10M in-house venture fund for a Fortune Global 50 company. He has consulted for a number of Silicon Valley venture funds that are focused on commercializing leading-edge US technologies in China.

Daniel has been a CFO for both private and publicly-listed companies, start-ups as well as Divisional CFO for Fortune 500 companies. He has been involved in the medical devices space since 2007 and was most recently, the CFO of Reach Surgical, where he was also responsible for the international business and all its international joint ventures.

He has a Bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences with an emphasis on medical physics from Cambridge University, a Master’s degree from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, as well as, finance and accounting qualifications from the ACCA in London. While at Cambridge and at Stanford, he was respectively, a Cambridge Commonwealth Fellow and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow.

John Hyung-Jun Kim completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Stanford University Medical Center. Dr. Kim completed his undergraduate studies in biochemistry from Harvard University, and is a graduate of Duke University’s School of Medicine and the Fuqua School of Business, where he concentrated on health sector management. Dr. Kim has worked as a medical consultant in biogenetics, and was previously with Bear Stearns & Company as an Equity Research Associate. Dr. Kim continues to practice part-time as a hospitalist, keeping Aphelion Capital current with medical trends.

Dr. Kim sits on the Board of Directors at Siesta Medical, Zeto, and Moving Analytics.

Felicia leads Olympus’ business development efforts for APAC and China regions, as well as Global Urology and Single-Use.

This includes identifying strategic opportunities for Olympus that drive complementary and/or innovative growth within the exciting Medtech space.

Under Felicia’s thought leadership, she initiated, lead and announced Olympus’ first ever APAC Innovation Program (“OAIP”) which was launched out of the APAC region.

The Program aims support the innovation ecosystem, identify and collaborate with Visionaries in this part of the world. Felicia sees APAC and China as very promising regions comprising of a hotbed of innovative and bold ideas, especially in the fields of digital and AI solutions.

Prior to joining Olympus, Felicia served in similar corporate development positions with other Corporates (Linde AG and Cargill, Inc.), executing M&A transactions from 2016 to 2021.

This follows her prior experience and interest in M&A transaction execution, which saw her career commencing at Citi Investment Banking in 2008 and subsequently Deutsche Bank in 2014.

Nina Zou is responsible for leading external partnership and M&A initiatives for Johnson & Johnson MedTech in China, supporting the company’s innovation and growth agenda since 2022.
Nina joins the Business Development Team with extensive experience in both the J&J MedTech China DePuy Synthes and Ethicon franchises. Originally joining Johnson & Johnson Medical China in 2005, Nina has led the DePuy Synthes China New Product Development Team for 2 years. Nina established this new function in China, championing portfolio strategy development by working closely with China and global cross-functional teams to effectively identify and realize China-specific innovation opportunities. Prior to serving as the DePuy Synthes NPD Lead, Nina led the DePuy Synthes Spine marketing team beginning for 4 years through portfolio optimization, identifying high-growth opportunities in both cervical and thoracic lumber. Before Spine, Nina worked in Ethicon for 11 years in sales and marketing roles of increasing responsibility, including 5 years of experience in upstream Marketing.

Miang is a Pharmacist, MBA. She has more than 25 years of regulatory affairs experience with numbers of medical devices and pharmaceutical companies. Her current position at JNJ Vision is the Regional Regulatory Affairs head, Asia Pacific. Miang has a board experience in Regulatory Affairs, Clinical Research, Reimbursement, Government Affairs and Quality Assurance in Asia Pacific including Japan. Prior to Cardinal Health, Miang worked for numbers of healthcare companies (Takeda, Boston Scientific, JNJ, Actelion, Cochlear, Bausch & Lomb, Zimmer Biomet, Alcon & Cardinal Health) in different locations (Bangkok, Hong Kong, Sydney and Singapore). In addition to her current job, she has been heavily involved with numbers of harmonization activities including GHTF, AHWP, APEC RHSC and ACCSQ. She was one of the members of GHTF SG02 (Postmarket Surveillance) and Co-chair of AHWP TC 2 terms. Currently, she is a chair of APACMED Regulatory Affairs group and an industry Vice chair of GHWP (Global Harmonization Working Party) Technical committee.

Rob MacCuspie is a Regulatory Affairs Manager at Proxima Clinical Research, a contract research organization that serves the emerging drug and medical device industries. At Proxima, Rob works on
various medical device and drug product consulting projects and submissions across all stages of development.  Prior to joining the Proxima team, Rob served as the VP of Science at a rolled goods materials science startup, leading their entrance to the medical device space by helping identify regulatory strategies and leading building their first quality management systems, and as Director of Science at a leading dietary supplement company, where he contributed to the company’s first medical device product development regulatory and testing strategies and developed and delivered product education for practitioners and consumers. Rob has previously been the First Faculty and Director of Nanotechnology and
Multifunctional Materials programs on the startup team at Florida Polytechnic University, founded a consulting company to help scientific startups accelerate their path to market, and worked in the national lab system including at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, contributing
with the Nanotechnology Characterization Lab collaboration between NIST, NCI, and FDA to develop standards and methods to accelerate cancer nanomedicines from bench to bedside. 
 
Rob earned a PhD in Nanotechnology and Materials Chemistry from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, a Bachelors of Science in Chemistry and a Bachelors of Science in Molecular Biology and Microbiology from the University of Central Florida. He has published 45 peer-reviewed publications which have been cited over 4,000 times, and holds 1 US Patent.
Rob has also written and presented content for multiple scientific companies to help with their product education and technical sales efforts, and has been on dozens of product launch teams.

Gordon is the President of Schatz Reimbursement Strategies LLC, advising medical device companies on coding, coverage, and payment to improve market access. Previously, as a lawyer at Reed Smith, a global law firm, Gordon advised start up and Fortune 100 device manufacturers on how to combine reimbursement with product development, regulatory, marketing, sales, and customer support. During his tenure at Reed Smith, Gordon served as the head of the Health Care Group and later as the Asia Life Science Integration Partner in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
After leaving Reed Smith, Gordon was appointed Executive Vice President – Healthcare – at China Trade Strategies and then formed his own consulting firm focusing on the United States healthcare system, especially Medicare and private payers. Gordon has obtained new CPT and ICD-10-PCS codes, expanded coverage and increased payment for innovative devices. He conducts front-end reimbursement landscape feasibility studies, followed by strategy development and implementation for devices in the cardiac, orthopedic, neurology, ophthalmology, imaging, diagnostics, and many other clinical specialties.
Gordon serves as a judge in the MedTech Innovation program. In addition to numerous publications on reimbursement in the US, he co-edited with Professor Wang Chenguang at the Tsinghua School of Law in Beijing, the FDLI Compilation of Chinese FDA Regulations on Drugs and Devices. Gordon also authored chapters on Regulatory Challenges for Medical Device Under the China FDA (Food and Drug Regulation in an Era of Globalized Markets, Academic Press, 2015) and co-authored the chapter on China in Commercialization of Health Care (Thompson Reuters 2013). His article on China’s Drug Pricing regulations appeared in the China Business Review. He has been quoted in the NY Times and Wall Street Journal.
A graduate of Haverford College with Honors in History, Gordon earned his Juris Doctor law degree at Temple University Law School, with the Barristers Award for Trial Advocacy. He lives in the Washington DC area.

Seasoned Global Healthcare Leader, Anh Bourcet (Nguyen) has a 15-year track record of driving excellence and transformation in Market Access for pharmaceuticals, medical devices and diagnostics. Known for establishing strategic multi-stakeholder partnerships, Anh has shaped access policies, built the Market Access function from the ground up, transformed clinical practices, for optimised patient access to innovations.

Passionate about improving patient access to innovations, her leadership positions enabled her to drive change within and outside organisations. In her role of APAC Director Health Economics & Market Access in Johnson & Johnson, she led successful premium reimbursements and accelerated launches. She then joined Abbott to head Market Access and build the function from the ground up in APAC. Prior to these, she worked as a regulator, developing policies for innovations at the French Health Safety Agency (ANSM).
Her contributions to the field have been widely recognized, and she has been a regular speaker at major international conferences, providing valuable insights on topics such as access, reimbursement, digital health and health data.

It all started in an accidental rhetoric class. That’s where Laura Nobles found herself as a UC Berkeley freshman many years ago. There – and in subsequent courses – she learned to argue a case, tell stories with power, and move audiences to act. And she’s made that passion her life’s work ever since.

Today, Laura is a trusted C suite advisor who offers clients strategic thinking and communication programming designed to drive market adoption, sales growth and, when appropriate, successful exit strategies.

With more than 20 years of experience, Laura is steeped in healthcare and adept across virtually all communication disciplines. Since opening Pazanga (previously Nobles Global Communications) in 2006, Laura has overseen growth-focused public relations and integrated marketing programs for U.S., European and Israeli clients ranging from emerging venture-backed companies to mid-size and Fortune 500 organizations. Her knowledge spans clinical segments.

Laura was previously senior vice president/managing director for FischerHealth, a subsidiary of global PR firm Porter Novelli. There she provided senior counsel to medical device, health information technology, health services and life sciences clients and led the execution of numerous strategic public relations and integrated marketing programs. Over her five-year tenure, Laura’s many clients included Boston Scientific, Medtronic, DePuy Orthopaedics, Thoratec Corporation, CSL Behring, Elsevier and Epocrates.

Laura wasn’t always in healthcare, even though it’s where she was destined to be. Her earlier leadership roles were in the high tech, industrial manufacturing and consumer products segments.

Laura is one of a long line of entrepreneurs, which includes her great grandfather, both of her grandfathers, her grandmother and her father. She lives in Newport Beach, Calif. with her husband (also an entrepreneur), 11-year-old daughter and three dogs.

Emma has spent almost two decades helping leading brands in the healthcare and technology sectors build their corporate reputations and trust with multiple stakeholders across Asia Pacific. Using her wealth of regional client experience, knack for storytelling and building compelling narratives combined with her integrated communication expertise, she leads the Spurwing team to develop truly impactful communications programmes for clients.