How does one bring a positive impact on the world? Many of us would agree that every change that has been brought in the world for the benefit of others started with one single thought, one single idea.
When it comes to addressing the pressing issues around the world, be it world hunger, or climate change, or something else, we often talk about thinking outside the box for a solution. On the other hand, we have people who strive to crack the box wide open with their efforts, vision, and conscientiousness at heart.
As we talk about people who have the potential to contribute something good to the world, we feel honored to introduce you to Mr. Marc Rippen, president and founder of Alertgy, who works to address the issues of individuals suffering from diabetes.
The Beginning of Alertgy
Alertgy was founded as a result of Marc’s efforts to save his wife from entering a diabetic coma in 2016. It was then he realized the existing unmet need for this technology to measure blood sugar levels with an external wearable sensor device.
Alertgy saves the lives of diabetic patients, by dramatically improving their quality of life, increasing their lifespan, and easing the burden on their loved ones and caretakers, mostly by providing the world’s first real-time wearable non-invasive continuous glucose monitor and alert system.
The medical device and diagnostic industry are constantly growing and changing, with new technologies being introduced to the market all the time. Marc says, “We are entering a new era of medicine that will be significantly impacted by the incredible growth and breakthroughs in wearables, cloud-based IoT sensor systems, application of AI, and digital health.”
Marc spoke to The Chief’s Digest about his ideas, thoughts, and how he hopes to improve diabetic health through innovation. Below is an excerpt.
What are your company offerings? How have consumer responses shaped them over the years?
While we are a pre-revenue / pre-market company, we believe that our product will address the diabetes needs of tens of millions of patients worldwide. Beyond the obvious 400M diabetics globally, there is 1/3 of the world’s population that is borderline diabetic. These individuals are looking for a way to stem the advance of diabetes in their systems painlessly and effortlessly, which is what our tech is all about.
Alertgy provides the first non-invasive wearable continuous glucose monitor and alert system to measure the true blood glucose. It sets diabetics free from having to think about taking glucose measurements by allowing for fully automated, continuous monitoring with pre-set alerts for low or high glucose levels, as set by the user.
Every business, big or small, gets its fair share of challenges, especially during the initial days. Tell us about your challenges and how you managed to overcome them
Initially, we had to determine the correct placement of our device to maximize our accuracy and reliability over a long-term period. After this was established, we have focused on sensor development to get the highest quality data and stability within our device. This is an ever-evolving process inside our research and development team, and we will continue to improve our device so we can deliver the highest quality product to our customers when we begin manufacturing.
How do you define success?
Over the last 40 years of failures and successes, Marc has realized that only hard work, conviction, and resilience can create a difference between the two extremes. There is no substitute for making mistakes along the way and most importantly, learning from them.
Success in life is refining your failures because they are the constant in business and life in general. But one has to have fun along the way because it’s all about the journey. If one can’t cry about it, one has to have the ability to laugh about it.
Where do you see your company in a few years from now?
Currently, Alertgy is focused on first bringing our device to over 90% of the diabetic population, the non-insulin-dependent hyperglycemic type 2 diabetics to provide over 400 million people around the world with a way to easily and effectively alert them if their glucose levels are too high or low.
And get them to measure their blood glucose continuously without the need for invasive and expensive systems. The company will be pursuing an alert and surveillance application approval for this from the FDA.
Given that 1/3 of the world’s entire population are borderline diabetics we can help them better manage their lifestyles to keep them from becoming diabetic. In the future, there is no limit to what our technology can provide in the way of monitoring and diagnostics.
Published research indicates that our technology has the potential to track other metabolites and cellular markers within the body for other diseases that could pave the way for Alertgy to be a premier leader in diagnostic technology.
How has your journey been so far?
It’s been a rewarding and challenging journey, all at once. As always, there were and are no shortcuts and no road signs along the way. We are looking forward to completing our product and entering clinical trials by Q3 2021.
The Thought Leadership | Marc Rippen, President & Founder
Marc Rippen is an experienced and highly skilled engineer with over 30 years of experience. He has worked for multiple fortune 500 companies, the Department of Defense (DOD), NASA, SOCOM, and DARPA commercializing dozens of ground-breaking and revolutionary technologies.
Marc is a serial entrepreneur who took a couple of start-ups from seed to public and prides himself in doing the impossible by solving scientific problems that confound the world of digital health today. More importantly, he is personally vested in the building and commercializing of a fully non-invasive, wristband glucometer that alerts the patient of any dangerous glucose levers and helps them manage their diabetes with more confidence.
“Having the right team and surrounding oneself with creative, out-of-the-box thinkers is key in our engineering success.”