Additions of COO Gary Kaplan and Director of Hardware Engineering Val Valentine Bring Decades of Diverse Industry Experience to Team
CALIFORNIA – Breathometer, a pioneer in breath analysis technology, today announced the additions of Chief Operating Officer Gary Kaplan and Director of Hardware Engineering Val Valentine to its product development and operations team.
The additions, which will boost Breathometer’s product development and manufacturing processes and abilities and complement the cutting edge work of the research and development team led by Chief Technology Officer Tim Ratto, comes as the company continues to expand and develop its rich product pipeline.
“We founded Breathometer because we are committed to creating innovative products that help improve customer health and quality of life. Both Gary and Val will help us accomplish that goal,” said Breathometer Founder and CEO Charles Michael Yim. “Both of them bring maturity, experience, and vision to our team and I am proud to work closely with them to deliver for our customers.”
Chief Operating Officer Gary Kaplan is an accomplished medical technology executive with over 25 years of experience building and growing innovative health care businesses that improve the standard of care for patients and providers. Director of Hardware Engineering Val Valentine is an experienced engineering manager with over 25 years of industry experience designing and building medical devices, consumer electronics, smart battery systems, and robotic equipment.
Gary is responsible for product development, operations, quality assurance, clinical affairs, and regulatory affairs. Most recently he was COO of a company that developed and commercialized a new force mitigating football helmet for the NFL and NCAA, where he led the R&D, operations/manufacturing, regulatory, quality, and intellectual property functions. Gary has successfully led small entrepreneurial companies, as well as larger growth-stage ventures, through the research, product development, formalization, and commercialization stages in a variety of medical technology sectors, primarily cardiology/electrophysiology, asthma therapy, surgical navigation, lung cancer diagnostics and surgery, and critical care monitoring. He previously held a variety of engineering and operations management positions at Broncus Technologies and Medtronic.
Director of Hardware Engineering Val Valentine has a proven record of successfully developing innovative medical systems, transferring design into production and bringing large volume consumer devices to markets worldwide. Before joining the team at Breathometer he was a senior manager at Apple, where he designed the first smart iPhone battery and developed state-of-the-art smart battery systems for Apple’s portable products. Prior to this, Val spent almost 10 years helping to develop an inhaled insulin technology for diabetics.
