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Too often we define the Medtech sector by the number of dollars raised, IPOs helped or companies sold. But the focus neglects the very foundation of the sector - the People. Join the Medtech Talk Podcast each week to hear from entrepreneurs, investors and executives who spend their days developing the tools that make sick people well and health care more efficient.

Success nVisioned, Surbhi Sarna’s Story

March 15, 2021

After passing out from extremely painful complex ovarian cists at age 13, Surbhi Sarna became all too familiar with the challenges and lack of adequate solutions for women’s health. Benefiting from intelligent and entrepreneurial parents, she became so determined to start a company to tackle women’s health issues someday that she wrote it in her college application personal statement. After graduating from UC Berkely, she went to Abbott Vascular to work on some of their most innovative products before transitioning to BioCardia for more of a startup culture. While at both places, she continued to read papers about women’s health, and after she lost her grandmother to breast cancer, she decided to take her leap of faith and start nVision Medical. In this interview with host Geoff Pardo, Surbhi shares her story of founding and leading nVision, including securing a very challenging first funding round, transitioning from being an engineer to a woman CEO, negotiating the company’s eventual exit, and staying onboard to support the product’s further development as part of Boston Scientific. Here all this plus Surbhi’s thoughts on the changing landscape of women’s health and what’s next for her.

Surbhi Sarna

Founder & CEO

nVision Medical

Surbhi Sarna has served on the Board of Penumbra since July 2019. Ms. Sarna is currently a Visiting Partner at Y Combinator. In 2011, Ms. Sarna founded nVision Medical, a healthcare company developing pioneering technology to enable early detection of ovarian cancer, with the intention of fulfilling an unmet clinical need. She led the company from its inception and through its earliest days of product development, funding and initial clinical trials. In April 2018, nVision Medical was acquired by Boston Scientific, and Ms. Sarna led the efforts to commercialize the technology developed by nVision Medical at Boston Scientific through July 2020. Prior to her founding of nVision, Ms. Sarna held a variety of roles in healthcare, including roles at BioCardia and Abbott Vascular. Ms. Sarna received a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.