Outset Medical Appoints Chief Operating Officer

Outset Medical, a commercial-stage company delivering new technology into the $13 billion global dialysis market, has appointed Gus Castello as chief operating officer.
 
Castello is an experienced medtech veteran with more than 30 years of diverse leadership positions in product operations and quality. From early 2002 until late 2013, he held the positions of vice president of manufacturing and later, senior vice president of product operations worldwide for Intuitive Surgical Inc. During his tenure at Intuitive Surgical he was responsible for the leadership, planning and execution of the company’s product quality and operations strategy in support of 20 percent year-over-year topline revenue growth from $40 million in 2001 to $2.3 billion in 2013. During this time, Castello also led key initiatives around the reliability, cost reduction and high-volume manufacturability of four generations of the da Vinci Surgical System and its associated surgical tools and accessories.
 
Prior to Intuitive Surgical, Castello held various leadership positions with United States Surgical Corporation, spending the last six of his 10-year career with USSC as general manager for USSC’s Caribbean manufacturing plants. He also held senior operations posts in dental, orthodontics, and steam generation capital equipment industries with responsibility for offshore manufacturing and quality.
 
“We are thrilled to welcome Gus to the Outset Medical leadership team,” said Leslie Trigg, Outset Medical’s CEO. “In much the same way Intuitive Surgical leveraged technology to transform the way surgeries are performed, Outset sees an opportunity for new technology to reduce the cost of dialysis care and meaningfully improve the patient experience. Gus’ experience helping build Intuitive Surgical into the powerhouse it has become is invaluable as we scale the growth of our technology both domestically and abroad.”
 
Today, hemodialysis is labor-intensive and expensive to provide, and many patients lack flexibility and control over the experience. Outset Medical’s Tablo System is the first to combine consumer product simplicity, wireless connectivity and real-time integrated water purification to uniquely enable new care delivery models aimed at significant cost reduction for providers and a substantially improved treatment experience for patients.
 
“With over 500,000 patients in the United States dialyzing at least three times each week, Outset Medical has an opportunity to make an enormous impact on the lives of dialysis patients and to

enable greater efficiencies in dialysis clinics,” said Castello. “I am excited to join Outset Medical’s team to execute on the company’s vision to give patients more control over their care.”
 
Dialysis is delivered several times per week to remove waste products and excess fluid from patients with kidney failure. More than 72 million dialysis treatments take place each year. According to the United States Renal Data System, the annual cost of dialysis to Medicare exceeds $33 billion.
 
Outset Medical’s Tablo System has been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in acute and chronic care settings. The company commercialized Tablo in the United States in mid-2016. Through sensor-based automation, design simplicity, wireless medical informatics and a novel integrated, on-demand water purification system, Tablo is aimed at driving cost reduction through service model innovation in multiple clinical settings—dialysis clinics, acute dialysis in hospital and extended care facilities. An IDE trial is underway to expand the labeled indication for use of Tablo in a fourth market, home hemodialysis.
 
Designed to look and feel more like a consumer product than a medical device, Tablo’s compact size and form factor are intended, in the dialysis clinic setting, to allow patients to set up and monitor their own treatment. Called “in-center self care,” this modality allows the provider to think differently about staffing and gives patients more control over their schedule and treatment experience.
 
Additionally, Tablo removes the need for expensive clinic infrastructure. Tablo connects directly to tap water and purifies it on demand. It also generates dialysis fluid in real-time while the patient is dialyzing. By disconnecting dialysis from expensive “bricks and mortar” infrastructure, Tablo expands the settings in which dialysis can be efficiently delivered, and reduces costs in settings such as hospitals and extended care facilities that lack centralized industrial water purification systems.
 
Outset Medical is dedicated to technology-driven service model innovation that reduces cost and dramatically elevates the patient’s care experience. The company is located in San Jose, Calif., and is backed by a number of blue-chip U.S. institutional investors.