INNOVATION IN NEUROSTIMULATION

Founding partner at Xana, Smart Stimulation

BACKGROUND:

I grew up in a very small mountain village in northern Spain:

They were years glued to a bike, building cabins with my sisters and cousins and enjoying the biggest snowfalls I have ever known.

Back then, toys that did things didn’t last long. I disassembled them to see where the secret was, and I could hardly leave them as they were. Years later, curiosity led me to study engineering and focus on technology.

My first professional experiences were automating manufacturing processes and making prototypes for new products. The first served to strengthen an approach towards the systematization and automation of everything that is repetitive and the second to discover how to turn ideas into reality: prototyping, validating and improving.

The latter led me get closer to the world of marketing. The challenge went from creating the most advanced technology to matching what the user needed, which does not always coincide. I discovered that simplicity works best and that the most advanced technology is the one that is easy to use.

From marketing I moved on to quality management, an exciting and intense stage in which I enjoyed the opportunity to audit the management models of more than 400 companies. I was certified as an EFQM assessor and IRCA lead auditor of quality management systems.

As time went by, I began to feel the need to get involved in my own projects where I could put everything I had learned into practice. My entrepreneurial spirit was asking for a way.

The first dive into the world of entrepreneurship was managing a pioneering project in the pharmaceutical distribution sector in Spain. Today, they continue to be a reference at a national level.

With the next project, however, I experienced the pain of defeat. The objective was exciting: to improve the outcomes of companies by managing the health of their workers. We started very well and the expectations were very good but the 2008 financial crisis affected us a lot. We survived the first tsunami but the wounds did not heal well and finally it could not be. I learned that context and timing are very important.

The day-to-day hustle and bustle gave way to calmer days, with slow time to think, and once again the curious child emerged to demand a new dive into technology.

I was comfortable in the health sector and biomedical engineering sounded very attractive to me, so I decided to devote my time to it and train myself.

I went back to college as a 40-year-old. It was tough. I remember the headaches. They were different, like sores in places where you haven’t exercised in a while.

I spent a year with the theoretical training and another with the practical one. I went through different health services, such as nephrology, genetics, ophthalmology, neurophysiology, radiology, radiotherapy, nuclear medicine or trauma surgery (by the way, very proud to leave the operating room on my own feet), absorbing all I could from the specialists with whom I coincided. I wanted to find a space where I felt really good about adding value.

An ancient Chinese proverb formulates it as: “start round to end square“, round, without edges, to be able to roll and explore until you find what you want and then become square to strengthen your position and persevere in it.

After rolling and rolling for a time, the edges appeared in Neurostimulation, a field with huge potential which I enjoy like the childhood snowfalls in the village.

These are the places I’ve passed through. Some have been through me more than others. The details and opinions of the people I’ve worked with can be seen on Linkedin.