We were lucky to catch up with Scott Mader recently and have shared our conversation below.

Scott, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

I am among those fortunate enough to have excellent parents. The fundamentals in childhood were focus on education, competition, kindness ,and pursuing a “purposeful” life. Nobody can define “purposeful” for you, you have to do it yourself. Once you have determined what is purposeful, it gives your life meaning, gravity, and protects you from falling into the abyss of straying, engaging vices, and careening down dubious paths.
My parents were in healthcare. My father was an internal medicine specialist, my mother was a nurse. As I emerged from academics I was concerned about disappointing my father because I did not want to be a medical doctor. Instead he guided my interest in innovation down the path of identifying unmet clinical needs in healthcare delivery. This was an inflection point in my transition to a purposeful adult. It founded a common interest in adulthood with my parents and provided a real-world context for gaps in caring for patients.
Over the ensuring decades it has allowed me to bring novel treatments for things like diabetes and cardiovascular disease, develop novel biomarkers for a variety of conditions, and introduce novel medical devices.
I believe it is fair to say that AseptiScope may not be here today if not for my parents.
That is just ONE thing of many that they did right.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I have “become” a clinical innovation expert over several chapters of my adult life:.
For the first chapter I worked as a product launch expert in pharmaceuticals (BMS/Novo), studying business while introducing transformative treatments that have had unique impact in diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, infectious disease, etc.
Later I moved to California and the second chapter – driving a young San Diego start-up to commercial success introducing novel biomarker technology for early disease detection and management. That had an equally successful exit by acquisition for 1.6B (Biosite).
The 3rd chapter I spent as CEO of a clinical innovation company (CLINDEVOR 360) applying my clinical demand generation principles to companies who had unique solutions for healthcare. During this time I also refined the understanding of corporate governance, management, and growth strategy.
This current (4th) chapter is AseptiScope, where we have identified a big hole in patient safety that has enormous need to save costs, time, and lives. Our solution, The DiskCover System, is the first solution for contaminated stethoscopes that have been a major snake-in-the-grass, transmitting the most dangerous pathogens from patient to patient during care delivery.
I’m proud of the journey, but most proud about having a significant contribution to patient safety and helping care givers by saving them time, reducing their burden, and giving them more options at their disposal to improve patient outcomes. I am thankful for the opportunity to have taken this purposeful professional path..

Have you ever had to pivot?

– EARLY LIFE: I am from the Eastern states and provinces of N. America. As a child I was raised in the US by Canadian parents but also moved back to Canada as a young teen ager where I pursued advanced ice-hockey while in preparatory school. My college life and early adulthood and professional life were in the east. Life was good, and I suspect my world would have continued in the eastern provinces forever if fate had not lent a hand.
– LIFE CHANGE: In my early 30’s I found out that my marriage had ended. it was devastating, saddening, embarrassing, and surreal. I resigned, sold my home, split everything down the middle and decided to move west. At the time I felt I needed distance and a 2 year catharsis. I figured I’d end up back East again but needed refuge from the acute turmoil of my personal life.
– PIVOT: I interviewed up and down coastal California, finding the right home and the right start-up company in San Diego. The change was perfect, as I was introduced to my newly “single” status in a world that hadn’t already defined me as married. After a world of “Fortune Fifty” pharma companies, I found myself in a health tech start-up, with fewer resources but enormous impact on a young company trying to accomplish a break-through moment. I redefined myself through embracing change, and after 20 plus years in California I can honestly say it was one of the best things for me. The challenge that brought me here was was very painful, but from it came wonderful things.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My co-founders at AseptiScope are people with whom I had great success in prior work.
I first met co-founders Alan Maisel and Frank Peacock when I arrived in San Diego. These two medical experts became the leaders in my clinical development programming for acute cardiac diseases like heart attacks and heart failure. Together we introduced solutions that have redefined how symptoms like chest pain and breathlessness are evaluated in the emergency department, and how they are treated in hospitals and clinics. They remain impressive people in my life in and out of work.
Kelly Powers is my co-founder and dear friend of two decades, having met her when she graduated from her MBA in supply chain management while working at a local energy company. Later she would become an analyst and customer consultant at CLINDEVOR 360 innovation, and I would develop a whole new respect for her dogged determination to quality processes, lean practices, and analysis..
Earlier I noted that AseptiScope would not have existed without my parents. In a symmetrical way, I would not have had the determination to start AseptiScope without my trusted friends and colleagues Kelly, Frank, and Alan.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.diskcover.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aseptiscope/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Aseptiscope/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-mader-594177/
• Twitter: https://x.com/aseptiscope
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_EmpPucBxqOpziEQOeOBtQ
• Other: https://aseptiscope.com/

Image Credits

AseptiScope Inc