ProductTank Pittsburgh

Getting a new medical product to work is only step one: the journey through invention, scaling, and adoption is the real story of managing medtech products. This ProductTank panel brings together three people who have experienced different legs of that journey, offering a rare, honest look at what it actually takes to manage products in the healthcare space.

Anna Li is the young CEO and co-founder of Korion Health, the Pittsburgh startup that represented the US and won the $1M Hult Prize in 2024. She started Korion as a second-year MD-PhD student in the Pitt-CMU program, with no business background, after watching patients struggle to access care during the pandemic. What began as a scrappy student project — built with the help of a Pittsburgh community that rallied around her — became the SoundHeart Digital Stethoscope and landed her on the front page of Pitt Magazine. Anna is now navigating the FDA approval process for the first time, doing the work of shaping a product before there's a team, a playbook, or even a market yet.

Doug Descalzi has managed products at nearly every altitude a medtech career offers — from new product development at Medrad, to running a global device business at Bayer, to scaling robotics and automation at Omnicell, to now founding and leading his own startup, Thiopoly. His path is a tour of how the same core product discipline — deciding what to build and why — plays out differently across startups, global corporations, and back again.

Jeremy Kimmel is the CEO and founder of Monarch Learning Labs, which builds simulation training that helps medical device teams gain confidence, readiness, and adoption. His work makes the case that a product isn't finished being managed once it ships — training and adoption are just as critical to a product's success as the build itself. Jeremy previously worked at ALung Technologies, a Pitt spinout that walked the same FDA device-approval path Anna is on now.

Together, Anna, Doug, and Jeremy will unpack what it really takes to move a medtech product from creation to commercialization — the decisions, tradeoffs, and unglamorous work that happens at every stage, and in every kind of company along the way. Whether you're dreaming of founding your own company, of working as a product manager at a large corporation, of leading a product team, or somewhere in between, come hear the real, unfiltered stories behind building medical products that actually reach patients.

Timing:
5:30-6:00 - arrival & networking
6:00-7:00 - a few words from our host followed by the panel discussion
7:00-7:30 - more networking & departure

Location notes: We will be in the Singleton Room within Roberts Hall, which is located across from Hamerschlag Hall on the CMU campus. You can enter through Hamerschlag or from outside near Scaife Hall.