Marc Rippen, the Founder and CEO of Alertgy, is a visionary leader, a highly skilled engineer, scientist, and technical sales and marketing professional with a proven track record in product development, program management, and sales related to the use of high technology to solve problems that others thought were impossible to solve.
Alertgy is a pioneer in 100% non-invasive continuous blood glucose monitoring technology. Alertgy’s DeepGluco wearable gadget can correctly monitor blood glucose in real time, up to three times per minute, thanks to its proprietary radio frequency sensor. Most significantly, DeepGluco’s patented AI system can offer users and their chosen HCPs vital, up-to-the-minute life-saving notifications. Unlike previous CGMs, the business removes interstitial lag as well as the painful and unpleasant side effects associated with patches, needles, and implants. The DeepGluco wrist band can easily be fitted into an existing smart watch form factor, and future versions might be much smaller. Following FDA clearance, these will be available to customers.
Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between World’s Leaders and Marc Rippen:
Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in this industry through your expertise in the industry?
I have always enjoyed solving difficult technical challenges for my customers. With degrees and formal education in chemistry, physics, microbiology/immunology, management, and engineering areas, I can identify out of the box solutions to what appear to be impossible problems, with practical solutions. From Army officer to Engineer Program Manager at Pratt & Whitney to Director of Technology Transfer Center at FIU College of Engineering, I advocated for technology commercialization and venture capital for start-ups to bring technology to market. I also co-founded an internet technology company and took it from start-up to public in 2 years with 1 million dollars in seed funding.
Most recently, I was the Engineering Manager of Innovative Technology for Concurrent Technologies Corporation, and then Director of Engineering at SRI, where I managed 10-30 million dollar applied R&D contracts. “My innovations there earned the coveted SRI Gold Nugget Award for developing significantly paradigm shifting technologies and patents to show for it.” Over my professional career, I was able to solve critical problems for DARPA, SOCOM, the Navy, Air Force, NASA, and the Army. From design, development, and validation of a 9 man submersible jet/submarine to development and demonstration of advanced electromagnetic sensors and RF communications systems for maritime applications, the teams I led took existing academic research and applied it in a practical manner.
I started Alertgy when my wife almost went into a diabetic coma. This was the defining challenge in my life, which appeared not to be well focused until this time. I could now connect all the dots and have realized that this was my training for the job. I now have to bring a non-invasive continuous blood glucose monitoring and alert system to those that need it and make it inexpensive enough that anyone can use it.
What are the challenges you and your team at Alertgy come across in your day-to-day operations?
The most recent challenge has been the global shortage of critical electronic components. We turned this into a plus by using the dead time to accelerate our development of a smaller and cheaper system where the availability of parts was not an issue. This translated into an 80% reduction in manufacturing costs and a 30% reduction in size while improving performance by several orders of magnitude.
What people, what books, what life factors have influenced and impacted you?
I have always loved science fiction. Jules Verne was one of my favorite authors as he really got into the science of things. It’s interesting to note that today’s science was yesterday’s fiction. When I was tasked with developing the conceptual design and then demonstrating the viability of a flying submarine or submersible jet aircraft, I got a lot of my ideas from science fiction. These ideas create the vision that is needed to be able to lead the development team to make the impossible practical. I am proud to say my team was successful in the conceptual design and demonstration of its viability through model testing of a flying sub based on a voyage to the bottom of the sea.
Where do you envision yourself being in the long run and what are your future goals for Alertgy?
With our technology, we have a unique ability to significantly affect the lives of over 90% of the 420 million diabetics in the world population with a way to manage their disease easily and effectively. We also help the 2 billion borderline diabetics by giving them the knowledge to prevent themselves from becoming diabetic through better awareness of how their lifestyle affects their glucose levels. We will also save their lives as they will know when they become diabetic so they can seek proper treatment before the damage is done and they have to go to the hospital. We improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes with automated alerts if their glucose levels are too high or low. We provide them with an effortless means of measuring 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 regulatory organizations like the FDA worldwide. 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 will be 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.
What would be your advice to budding tech leaders?
My advice to budding tech leaders is to have humility, honesty, empathy, open mindedness, honor, passion, the ability to listen, care for people that work with you, always be open to learning, be willing to fail and learn from your mistakes, be forgiving, and never give up on something that is important.
