Magnolia Medical Appoints Former Becton Dickinson Senior Executives to Its Medical & Scientific Advisory Board

New expertise focused on advanced diagnostic technologies to improve sepsis testing accuracy

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Sep 17, 2020, 13:15 ET

SEATTLE, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. today announced the appointment of two healthcare safety veterans to its Medical & Scientific Advisory Board (MSAB) – Richard (Rick) M. Ivey, retired Worldwide Vice President of Research & Development for Becton Dickinson (BD) Life Sciences – Diagnostic Systems business and Paul E. Goldenbaum, PhD, retired Director of Research & Development for the Diagnostic Instrument Systems division of BD. The MSAB board will continue to focus on Magnolia's new advanced products and integrated diagnostic technologies to reduce blood culture contamination and improve sepsis testing accuracy.

Rick Ivey was the R&D Leader for the BD Diagnostic Systems business for over 20 years. Ivey led an R&D team of several hundred engineers and scientists located across six worldwide sites focused on diagnostic technologies ranging from infectious disease diagnostic instrumentation and laboratory automation engineering to microbiology, molecular biology, immunochemistry and cytology.

Throughout his career, Ivey worked closely with business leaders to drive new growth opportunities via technology and product development, external collaborative partnerships, technology planning, technology acquisition management, and sourcing of technical and program leadership talent to meet company strategic goals. The Diagnostic Systems business unit comprised several BD Market Segment Areas including Molecular Diagnostics, Women's Health and Cancer, Microbiology, and Point of Care Diagnostics.

As a technology leader, Ivey successfully built and led an organization which delivered dozens of new diagnostic platforms, assays, and new technologies for BD including automated blood culture (sepsis detection) systems, TB detection systems, bacterial identification and antimicrobial susceptibility systems, informatics lab middleware software based systems, microbiology lab automation, and rapid/automated molecular diagnostic systems. Ivey received multiple US and worldwide patents in the field of bacterial sepsis detection and host response.

"Both time-to-result and accuracy are critically and equally important in the diagnosis of sepsis. Magnolia's solutions assure accuracy in determination of the causative agent from a blood specimen, critical to rapidly providing appropriate antibiotic therapy to reduce morbidity and mortality," said Ivey. "As the world continues to innovate in the time to actionable result domain with direct from blood detection and ID/AST capabilities, Magnolia's solutions will be even more important to getting the right answer quickly. I look forward to contributing to Magnolia's Medical & Scientific Advisory Board to guide development of innovative solutions for sepsis management."

Dr. Paul Goldenbaum's industry expertise was honed through a variety of leadership roles in R&D at BD within the Diagnostic Instrument Systems group. He was initially charged with improving and expanding the product line of BACTEC blood culture media for sepsis testing. In this role, he developed the blood culture media for all generations of the BACTEC blood culture system including radiometric, resin media, non-radiometric and the current fluorescent, non-invasive media.

During his tenure at BD, Dr. Goldenbaum directed a number of R&D areas. These included product development and manufacturing oversight for BD Immunodiagnostics (Directigen lateral flow products), BD Molecular Diagnostics (BD ProbeTec, BD Affirm, etc.), MGIT Mycobacteria detection systems, Phoenix microbial identification and antibiotic sensitivity testing, BBL plated and dehydrated media products, and more.

Throughout his time with BD, Dr. Goldenbaum was highly focused on blood culturing and sepsis. In his role as head of new technology development, Dr. Goldenbaum evaluated many potential disruptive new diagnostic technologies which involved close engagement with a broad range of start-up companies around the world.

"For decades, the only way to attempt to lower the number of contaminated false positive blood cultures was through vigorous disinfection of the blood draw site. It was through the insight and work of the founder of Magnolia Medical Technologies, Dr. Richard Patton, that a new and novel method to almost eliminate the false positive problem was developed; the Steripath Initial Specimen Diversion Device," said Dr. Goldenbaum. "I was intrigued by this concept and when asked to join the Magnolia team, I jumped at the opportunity to work with this highly qualified and innovative group. I find that as a scientist my collaboration with Magnolia is both stimulating and rewarding. I am very pleased to be part of the team that has developed a solution to blood culture contamination which is so beneficial to patient care, treatment costs, and antibiotic stewardship,"

"We are honored and fortunate to have Rick and Paul on the Magnolia team," said Greg Bullington, Magnolia's CEO and co-founder. "As we continue to develop innovative solutions to long-felt unmet needs in the IVD space, their deep technical expertise and collective knowledge base across the diagnostic technology landscape will help support our mission of significantly improving patient outcomes by delivering the right answer, every time."

The patented Steripath Gen2 ISDD^® product portfolio, including both direct-to-media and syringe configurations, is the only FDA 510(k)-cleared device platform indicated to reduce blood culture contamination.¹ This indication was cleared by the FDA based on peer-reviewed published controlled clinical studies demonstrating Steripath's ability to reduce blood culture contamination by 83%² and 88%³. Steripath has been clinically proven for use with blood cultures drawn via both venipuncture and peripheral IV starts.^2,3

Magnolia Medical Technologies develops, manufactures and markets innovative blood and bodily fluid collection devices to facilitate significant improvements in the accuracy, consistency and predictability of critical laboratory tests. Magnolia Medical invented and patented the Initial Specimen Diversion Technique (ISDT™) and Device (ISDD^®) for blood culture collection and contamination prevention. The company has amassed an intellectual property portfolio including more than 70 issued method, apparatus and design patents with more than 50 additional patent applications pending. For more information, visit www.magnolia-medical.com.

1.	Indicated to reduce blood culture contamination when contaminants are present, compared to standard method controls without diversion.
2.	M. Bell, et al. Journal of Emergency Nursing (2018)
3.	M. Rupp, et al. Clinical Infectious Diseases (2017)