Sue Siegel, chief executive of industrial conglomerate General Electric’s healthcare company venturing unit, has reportedly hired Rodney Altman (pictured) from venture capital firm CMEA Capital, according to news provider Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
His previous investments as a partner at CMEA from 2006 include Visiogen (acquired by Abbott in 2009), InSound Medical (acquired by Sonova in 2010), and VasoNova (acquired by Teleflex in 2011).
Siegel, who joined from venture capital firm Mohr Davidow, told the WSJ: “We’re still hiring. We will probably have seven full-time health investors once we’re staffed up.”
She said Healthymagination could do about 1.5 deals per year per partner and added to the WSJ there were “five areas where we plan to be most active.
“There is personalized medicine, or precision medicine, as we call it. I’m talking about companies like [GE Capital portfolio company] CardioDx, which looks at biomarkers in the blood as part of its diagnostic tests.
“We also like Big Data, clinical decision-support software for hospitals. We’re going to invest in life sciences, things like stem-cell therapeutics. We want to be the go-to for cellular therapeutics.
“We’re also interested in minimally invasive guidance, probes and endoscopes that guide decisions and treatment. We have a company like that, called Check-Cap. They make an ingestible capsule that provides imaging for colonoscopy.
“We’re also interested in patient monitoring and safety. We already have a presence in this area. We want to go more mobile.”
Separately, CMEA has been sued for alleged sexual harassment, retaliation and failure to prevent harassment by three former female employees, Dawn-Shemain Weeks, Margaret Hines and Shannon Schlagenhauf, according to news providers Forbes and Bloomberg.
Three former executive assistants allege in the 7 February filing in San Francisco Superior Court that John Haag, who was president and chief operating partner of the San Francisco firm, “behaved in sexually and racially inappropriate ways”.