SAN ANTONIO, Feb. 1, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Seno Medical Instruments, Inc., the leader in improving the process of diagnosing breast cancer through the development of an opto-acoustic (OA) device, today announced the appointment of Tom Umbel as Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Umbel previously served as the Vice President of Business Development for Bioventus, a privately held ortho-biologics company. Mr. Umbel brings more than 30 years of medical device and diagnostic leadership experience to the company, including extensive expertise in advancing solutions for women’s health. Mr. Umbel takes the helm from Tom Miller, Seno Medical’s President, who was serving as interim CEO following the departure of founder Janet Campbell.
“Tom is an acknowledged leader in the medical device industry with a strong track record in women’s health and diagnostic imaging,” said Dr. Harry Jacobson, Chairman of MedCare Investment Funds. “Tom’s track record of success in commercializing imaging technologies will be invaluable as we move closer to bringing the Imagio™ breast imaging system to market.”
Mr. Umbel was a key executive at Hologic, the largest dedicated women’s health company in the U.S. During his 15-year tenure he helped Hologic grow from a small, single-product company with $100 million in revenue to a large diversified company with more than $2.5 billion in sales. Prior to Hologic, Mr. Umbel was President of Direct Radiography Corp., where he led the development and commercialization of digital x-ray detector technology, which was sold to Hologic and became the core product for Hologic’s market-leading digital mammography system. Mr. Umbel has also held senior management positions at Sterling Diagnostic Imaging and DuPont. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Grove City College in Pennsylvania.
“I am enthusiastic to be joining Seno at this time and have the opportunity to help deliver to clinicians and patients a tool that will allow for more precise and earlier diagnosis of breast cancer,” said Mr. Umbel. “The team at Seno has done a tremendous job developing this innovative opto-acoustic technology. This technology has the potential to provide clinicians with the information needed to determine whether a suspicious breast mass is malignant or not, while potentially helping patients avoid undergoing negative biopsy procedures. I am confident that we have the pieces in place to bring this non-invasive method for diagnosing breast cancer to market.”
The Imagio™ OA breast imaging system was designed to identify the two functional hallmarks of cancer: the presence of abnormal blood vessels (tumor angiogenesis) and the relative reduction in oxygen content of blood that occurs in cancer compared to benign masses and normal tissues. The technology used by the Imagio™ system is non-invasive and does not require patient exposure to contrast agents, ionizing radiation (x-ray) or radio-isotopes, which are required for other modalities that are capable of functional imaging, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or positron emission tomography (PET).