Article perview reprinted from IN VIVO - July/August 2009
Born in a remote village in India, Hira Thapliyal played a critical role in the creation of many early technologies used in interventional cardiology, including DVI's atherectomy device and CVIS' intravascular ultrasound. However, he's perhaps best known as one of the founders of ArthroCare. In this interview adapted from the Stanford BioDesign Program's Innovators Workbench series, Thapliyal looks back on his early career. Read more...
Article perview reprinted from IN VIVO - July/August 2009
Most, if not all, successful people make a journey of some sort on the road to success, but it's hard to imagine a longer journey, geographically at least, than the one that Hira Thapliyal has made. A cardiovascular industry veteran, who played a critical role in the founding of companies such as atherectomy pioneer DVI (Devices for Vascular Intervention Inc.), intravascular ultrasound leader CVIS (Cardiovascular Imaging Systems, now part of Boston Scientific Corp.), and arthroscopy specialist ArthroCare Corp., Thapliyal was born in a small village called Thapli at the foot of the Himalayan Mountains in northern India. (In fact, the name Thapliyal means "someone from Thapli" and everyone in the village has the same last name.) It was as humble a background as one can imagine--even today, Thapliyal notes, the village doesn't have phone service--and far removed from the medical device and venture capital communities around Palo Alto, California that Thapliyal has called home for the past 30 years.
Thapliyal came to the US 40 years ago, to attend college—he studied electrical engineering and material science, first at Washington State University, then at the University of Idaho, and finally at Cornell University. After Cornell, Thapliyal stayed in upstate New York and began his career at Corning Glass Works, where a small project on an innovative glass scalpel launched him on his career in medical devices, a career that saw him front and center in the development of innovative technology in the years just after the introduction of angioplasty.
Thapliyal's longest stint, however, was with a cardiovascular start-up that morphed into an orthopedics company and became ArthroCare. More recently, Thapliyal has returned to the cardiovascular industry with a start-up in the booming atrial fibrillation space. In the following interview, conducted earlier this year as part of the Innovator's Workbench Series sponsored by Stanford University's Bio-Design Program, Thapliyal talks about what it was like in the early days of the interventional cardiology device revolution, his time at ArthroCare, and the lessons he's learned along the way.
Q: You started your career at Corning, which I know led directly to your first efforts in medical devices. How did that happen?
Hira Thapliyal: When I showed up at Corning, they pointed me to a program and said, "Thou shalt work on this," which happened to be a medical device. It was a glass scalpel whose edges were heated with a thin film, so that when you cut with the scalpel, it would cauterize--a terrific product. That's how I got started in medical device and where I learned my first lesson, which is that you have to be able to make devices at a reasonable cost. The scalpel worked very well, but it was very expensive to make and so there was really no market for it.
- David Cassak
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Companies mentioned in this article:
Abbott Laboratories Inc.
Advanced Cardiovascular Systems Inc.
ArthroCare Corp.
Boston Scientific Corp.
Cardiovascular Imaging Systems Inc.
Diagnostic Ventures Inc.
DVI Medical Corp.
Eli Lilly & Co.
Johnson & Johnson
Biosense Webster Inc.
Medtronic Inc.
Ablation Frontiers Inc.
CryoCath Technologies Inc.
Pathway Medical Technologies Inc.
SRI International
St. Jude Medical Inc.
Volcano Corp.
VytronUS Inc.
ev3 Inc.
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