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About Us

Turns out, we were sitting on a great idea all along.

Casana website shown on phone - woman sitting on toilet

Mission

To revolutionize health and wellness through in-home health monitoring, leveraging technology to enhance the efficiency of caregivers while effectively reducing healthcare costs for our patients and payers.

Vision

Empower the world’s caregivers with access to reliable, consistent vital signs to improve and extend the lives of those we love.

Where it all started…

Nick Conn showing the heart seat

Heart Seat® is invented by Nicholas Conn, PhD

Feb, 2014

Heart Seat® is invented by Nicholas Conn, PhD

a pencil on a paper showing a graph

First peer reviewed publication

May, 2018

First peer reviewed publication

hearthealth intelligence

Heart Health Intelligence (HHI) was incorporated

Jul, 2018

Heart Health Intelligence (HHI) was incorporated

glasses on top of papers

Second peer reviewed publication

Jan, 2019

Second peer reviewed publication

2.2M$ seed round

Heart Health Intelligence closed its $2.2M Seed Round.

Sep, 2019

Heart Health Intelligence closed its $2.2M Seed Round.

Aug 2020 14M Series A

HHI raises $14m Series A led by General Catalyst and Outsiders Fund

Aug, 2020

HHI raises $14m Series A led by General Catalyst and Outsiders Fund

casana logo

HHI rebrands to Casana

Oct, 2020

HHI rebrands to Casana

ribbon cutting

Casana opens headquarter office at 150 Metro Park in Rochester

Nov, 2020

Casana opens headquarter office at 150 Metro Park in Rochester

Casana Office

Casana opens commercial office in Boston

Jul, 2021

Casana opens commercial office in Boston

morningside

Casana raises $30m Series B led by Morningside

Jan, 2022

Casana raises $30m Series B led by Morningside

The Heart Seat

Casana receives FDA Clearance for SpO2 and Heart Rate

Apr, 2023

Casana receives FDA Clearance for SpO2 and Heart Rate

Executive Team

Austin
Austin McChord
Chief Executive Officer

As the founder and former CEO of Datto, an innovative provider of comprehensive backup, recovery, and business continuity solutions, Austin led the company through its acquisition by Vista Equity Partners in 2017, and subsequent IPO in 2020.

Austin is a Forbes 30 Under 30, was named Ernst & Young Technology Entrepreneur of the Year
in 2016, and earned recognition as one of the nation’s top 50 philanthropists in 2017. He holds several patents and has been a featured keynote speaker at national technology conferences.
Shikha
Dr. Shikha Anand
Chief Medical Officer

With more than 20 years of experience developing innovations and systems that improve health, Dr. Anand’s leadership experience includes public health, research, consumer health technology, and clinical informatics. Prior to joining Casana, Anand served as the Chief Medical Officer at Well, the on-demand healthcare guidance platform, and Withings, a world leader
in connected health technology. At Withings, she used her clinical, research, and data science expertise to lead initiatives to develop novel technology and algorithms to screen, diagnose, and monitor chronic medical and behavioral health conditions. She also led health innovation initiatives at Federally Qualified Health Centers, at Aetna/ CVS, with state and federal agencies, and in Walmart’s Care Clinics.
Nick
Nicholas Conn, PhD
Founder, Chief Scientific Officer

Nick completed his PhD in Engineering in 2016 at Rochester Institute of Technology, where he developed Casana’s technology – a toilet seat-based cardiovascular monitoring system. He founded Casana in 2018.

His expertise spans business development, algorithm development, cardiovascular monitoring, medical devices, ultra-low power systems, physiology, and signal processing. Nick also holds a
BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from RIT.
Olivia
Olivia Lew
Chief Operating Officer

Prior to Casana, Olivia was an investor on the early-stage team at General Catalyst. Her investment focus was on early‐stage founders building transformative companies at the intersection of software and healthcare. She served on the Board of multiple health tech startups.

Olivia’s experience also includes Capgemini Consulting, where she
consulted Global 500 companies on implementing enterprise transformations, and developed valuable experience in operations, change management, and business strategy.

Board of Directors

Jeff Leiden
Jeff Leiden
Chairman

Dr. Leiden is a physician and scientist who, for the last 40 years, has dedicated his career to improving the lives of people with serious diseases. His experience spans all aspects of the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. He is currently the Executive Chairman of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where he has served as
a member of the board of directors since 2009 and as Chairman, President and CEO from 2012 to 2020. Under his leadership, Vertex delivered the first and only precision medicines to treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis (CF). It is his mission and the basis of the company’s research priorities to bring transformative medicines to people with CF and other serious diseases. Dr. Leiden also cares deeply about inspiring and equipping under-resourced students and young women to become the next generation of scientific leaders. He established a signature program at Vertex to enhance science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) education among students in Vertex’s local communities, including an on-site Learning Lab, mentorship programs, internships and college scholarships. In 2017, Vertex announced a sustained corporate giving commitment of $500 million over the next 10 years, of which $50 million is focused on STEAM education.

In addition to his responsibilities at Vertex, Dr. Leiden is currently Chairman of Casana, a home health monitoring company, and Chairman of Tmunity Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing novel T-cell immunotherapies to treat solid tumors. He is Vice Chairman of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership and a director of the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. Dr. Leiden also serves on the board of fellows of Harvard Medical School and as co-chair of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s STEM Advisory Council and Digital Health Council. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the American Association of Physicians. He received his B.A., M.D. and Ph.D. degrees with honors from the University of Chicago.
Khan Siddiqui
Khan Siddiqui
Director

Dr. Khan Siddiqui is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Strategy Officer of Hyperfine, the world’s first FDA-cleared, truly portable Point of Care MRI. He brings his 25 years of experience as a trained clinician and serial healthcare technology entrepreneur to his work leading the strategic direction of the company.
He is also the founder and former Chief Medical and Chief Technology Officer at higi, where he led the development of the company’s products and technologies, focusing on patient engagement and positively impacting health outcomes through behavior change principles.

Dr. Siddiqui holds multiple patents for technology in areas of deep learning, AI, image processing, data visualization, as well as securing patient information handling and health records. His recent research includes large scale studies on the impact of ubiquitous access to health in combination with artificial intelligence and persuasive technologies to improve healthcare outcomes. Dr. Siddiqui particularly focuses on how to secure and protect data while enabling development of deep learning models to accelerate practical applications of AI in healthcare.

Prior to founding higi in 2012, Dr. Siddiqui was a Physician Executive and Principal Program Manager at Microsoft where he was responsible for platform engineering and machine learning for the health solutions group. His Microsoft legacy includes stimulating computer vision and machine learning research that led to the development of the regression forest algorithms, which became the foundation technology in the Xbox Kinect. Dr. Siddiqui was also responsible for developing Microsoft’s cloud (Azure) based medical imaging products and infrastructure.

Prior to Microsoft, Dr. Siddiqui was Director of Center for Biomedical Imaging and Informatics at Johns Hopkins University, Program Director of Imaging Informatics and MRI Fellowship Programs at University of Maryland and also the founding chair of American College of Radiology’s Imaging Informatics and IT Commission. He is a graduate of the Aga Khan University Medical College in Pakistan, completed his training in Medicine at New York University, Radiology training at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA, along with his fellowship in the Imaging Informatics at University of Maryland in Baltimore, MD. Dr. Siddiqui has published dozens of peer-reviewed papers and has given 100s of invited talks. Dr. Siddiqui is member of board of directors as well as advisory boards of various startups around the world and sits on various national committees on health care and medical imaging.

In his spare time, Dr. Siddiqui loves spending time with his family. He and his two sons can often be found exploring Chicago on bikes in between painting and SCUBA diving.
Paul Sagan
Paul Sagan
Director

Paul Sagan is a senior advisor to, and an XIR (executive-in-residence) at, General Catalyst, representing the firm as a director of airSlate, Anaconda, and Section4. Paul is also a director of Moderna, and the lead independent director of VMware. Prior to General Catalyst, Paul served as president, CEO and vice
chairman of Akamai Technologies, which he joined as Chief Operating Officer and employee #15 in 1998 when the company launched out of MIT.

A three-time Emmy Award winner for broadcast journalism, Paul serves as chairman of the board of ProPublica, and he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In all of his roles, Paul leverages his broad leadership capabilities, investment experience, and skills as an operator to advise and support CEOs and founding teams, with a particular focus on internet infrastructure, software and services.
stephen bruso casana board
Stephen Bruso
Director

Stephen Bruso joined Morningside Ventures in 2019 and focuses on early-stage investments in thedigital health space. He has extensive experience providing operational and management oversight tocompanies. Mr. Bruso serves as a director for numerous private companies including CognitoTherapeutics, Curai Health, Suvera, Neuroelectrics, Huckleberry, Ieso Digital Health, Wellinks, CurveHealth, Koa Health, SimpliFed,
and Blueberry Pediatrics; he is a board observer at Linus Health.

Prior to joining Morningside, Mr. Bruso worked at a series of molecular diagnostics startups spun outfrom the Church Lab at HMS before transitioning to the software space where he led the developmentand commercialization of e-commerce platforms for SMBs. He received his MBA from Boston Universityin 2019, graduating magna cum laude. He received his BA from Emory University in 2009.

Scientific & Medical Advisory Board

Dr. John Flack, Casana
John M. Flack, M.D.
Board Member

As a renowned and widely published (more than 200 peer-reviewed publications) hypertension specialist, Dr. Flack has expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of secondary forms of hypertension, resistant hypertension and hypertension in African Americans. He is a board-certified internal medicine specialist and an American Society of Hypertension (ASH)
-certified Clinical Hypertension specialist.  Dr. Flack completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular epidemiology at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.  He received internal medicine residency training as well as his medical degree from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center where he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) medical honor society; he also served as chief medical resident at OU.
George Bakris
George L. Bakris, M.D.
Board Member

Dr. Bakris is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the Am. Heart Assoc. Comprehensive Hypertension Center at the University of Chicago Medicine. He has published over 900 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in the areas of diabetic kidney disease, hypertension, and nephropathy progression. He is the Editor or Co-Editor of 22
books in the areas of Diabetic Kidney Disease Progression and Hypertension. Additionally, he is the Co-Editor of the 3rd and new 4th edition of Hypertension: A Companion to Braunwald’s The Heart. He has served on the Cardio-renal Advisory Board of the FDA and consultant to CMS. He chaired the first National Kidney Foundation Consensus report on blood pressure and the impact on kidney disease progression (2000). He has also served on many national guideline committees, including The Joint National Committee JNC 7 executive committee and writing group, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) Clinical Practice Guideline Committee, and the National Kidney Foundation (K-DOQI), Blood Pressure and Diabetes Guideline committees. He Chaired the ADA Blood Pressure Consensus Report (2016) and served on the ACC/AHA writing committee on the Resistant Hypertension Consensus report (2016-2017). Dr. Bakris is the past-president of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology (2000) and the American Society of Hypertension (ASH) (2010-2012). He is the recipient of the Irvine Page-Alva Bradley Lifetime Achievement Award-Am Heart Assoc. BP Council (2019) and National Kidney Foundation of Illinois Lifetime Service Award (2020). He serves on more than 15 editorial boards and is the current Editor-in-Chief of Am J Nephrology, Editor-in-Chief- UpToDate, Nephrology section, Hypertension Section Editor UpToDate and Assoc. Ed of Diabetes Care and Hypertension Res.
Milton Packer
Milton Packer, M.D.
Chair

Milton Packer MD is currently Distinguished Scholar in Cardiovascular Science at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas. Dr. Packer is an internationally recognized clinical investigator who has made many seminal contributions to the field of heart failure, both in understanding its mechanisms and defining its rational management. His work has
spanned more than 40 years and has established the cornerstone of the current modern treatments for heart failure, including ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers, angiotensin neprilysin inhibitors and SGLT2 inhibitors. He was also instrumental in raising concerns about the use of positive inotropic agents, calcium channel blockers and antiarrhythmic drugs in patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction. He proposed the neurohormonal hypothesis of heart failure in 1992.

In recognition of these achievements, he received the Lewis Katz Lifetime Achievement Award from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He has authored over 500 peer-reviewed publications and has been the overall Principal Investigator for 20 large-scale international trials of novel interventions in heart failure. He was a Founding Member and served a President of the Heart Failure Society of America (2000-2002), and he has served on numerous guidelines and standards committees for the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology. Since 1986, he has been a primary consultant to the FDA on matters related to the design of clinical trials and the interpretation of clinical trial evidence.
Nancy M. Albert
Nancy M. Albert, PhD
Board Member

Nancy M. Albert, PhD, CCNS, CHFN, CCRN, NE-BC, FAHA, FCCM, FHFSA, FAAN, is associate chief nursing officer for Cleveland Clinic’s Office of Nursing Research and Innovation, and a clinical nurse specialist in Cleveland Clinic’s Kaufman Center for Heart Failure in the Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute. With extensive
experience and expertise, Dr. Albert is an administrator and scientist and leads a program of research in heart failure.

Throughout her career, Dr. Albert has been influential in the healthcare industry actively volunteering on steering committees, work groups and task forces of many national healthcare organizations. She has published more than 315 peer-reviewed articles in nursing and medical journals, written book chapters and is a national and international presenter. She is the editor of a book (2016): Building and Sustaining a Hospital-Based Nursing Research Program (Springer). Additionally, she has received several professional awards and recognitions, holds 4 national nursing certifications, including being a board-certified nurse executive, is a Fellow at 3 organizations and is an adjunct associate professor at an Ohio-based school of nursing and a full professor at Aalborg University in Denmark. In 2015, she participated in a year-long AONE-Arizona State University Interprofessional Fellowship in Innovative Health Leadership.
Mike Parmacek
Mike Parmacek, M.D.
Board Member

Michael S. Parmacek, MD is the Frank Wister Thomas Professor of Medicine and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Parmacek graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University and obtained his M.D. from Northwestern University Medical School. He
performed residency training in Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan and Cardiovascular Disease fellowship training at Northwestern University.

Following his clinical training, Dr. Parmacek performed a postdoctoral research fellowship in molecular cardiology at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Michigan. He was appointed to the faculty of the University of Michigan from 1987-1992 and the University of Chicago from 1992-1998, serving as Co-Director of the Cardiology fellowship training program. In 1998, Dr. Parmacek was recruited to the University of Pennsylvania as Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. During his tenure (1998-2014), Penn’s Cardiovascular Medicine division ascended to the top tier of national programs. In 2005, Dr. Parmacek was appointed as the Director of the newly established University of Pennsylvania Cardiovascular Institute and served until 2017. In 2014, Dr. Parmacek was appointed as the 25th Chair of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Medicine; the nation’s first Department of Medicine.

Dr. Parmacek is internationally recognized for his pioneering research studies in cardiovascular cell and molecular biology. Over the course of his career, he has made multiple seminal discoveries that have impacted directly on understanding the molecular and genetic basis of congenital heart disease, aortic disease, and atherosclerosis. He has published over ninety manuscripts in high-impact journals including Science, Cell and the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Parmacek was chosen as an Established Investigator by the American Heart Association and he was elected Fellow of the AHA, American College of Cardiology and American College of Physicians. He also served as President of the Association of Professors of Cardiology. Dr. Parmacek has been elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the American Association of Physicians. In 2009, Dr. Parmacek was appointed by the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services to the Advisory Council of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute of the NIH.