Sapiens Steering Brain Stimulation (Sapiens) Advisory Board has appointed Jan C M Keltjens as the new president and CEO of the company, effective 21 October 2013.
According to a company press release, Jan Keltjens has a strong track record in the medical device sector and over 30 years of management experience. Recently, he was chairman, president and CEO of Endosense, which was acquired by St. Jude Medical in August 2013.
Prior to this, he worked as CEO and/or chairman in a number of medical device companies worldwide, including CryoCath (acquired in 2008 by Medtronic), AngioDynamics and Surpass Medical (acquired in 2012 by Stryker).
From 1995 to 2007 he was vice president and later worldwide general manager Neurovascular at Cordis.
Jan Keltjens graduated with a Master of Science in Physics from the University of Eindhoven and subsequently started his career at the Unilever Research Laboratory in Vlaardingen, the Netherlands.
Hans Barella, Chairman of the Advisory Board, comments: “We are very happy to have appointed Jan Keltjens as the president and CEO for Sapiens. With his excellent skills and expertise in combination with his international experience in commercialising breakthrough products, he is ideally suited to lead the company towards launching its first products and subsequent commercial successes. I would like to thank Sjaak Deckers for his past three years of leadership and shaping the company for a successful future. Sjaak was not only the co-founder of Sapiens, but also successfully raised the initial financing for Sapiens and reached positive results with ‘FAME’, the world’s first intra-operative clinical study demonstrating steerable brain stimulation.”
Jan Keltjens adds: “Sapiens is a very exciting company that I know well from my position on the Advisory Board since February 2012. I am looking forward to working with the cofounders, our Advisory Board and the strong Sapiens team, including Sjaak who will continue to serve in a senior leadership role.
Deep brain stimulation is a rapidly growing therapy to treat neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor and dystonia. The innovations being developed by Sapiens will allow more patients to benefit from deep brain stimulation while minimising the side-effects and reducing time and resources for the complex procedure. We look forward to bringing this technology to patients who suffer from such potentially debilitating diseases.”
