George Savage is a Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur and inventor with a successful track-record of breakthrough medical product innovation. As a founder, board member and C-level executive he has successfully taken multiple medical companies through the full lifecycle from conception to funding, development, regulatory approval, commercialization, and exit. Dr. Savage pioneered catheter-based minimally-invasive surgery inside the heart, proceeding from concept to FDApremarket approval in three years. In 2014, he was named one of the 100 most inspiring people in the pharmaceutical industry by PharmaVoice. In 2016, Dr. Savage was elected a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering “for innovation and medical device entrepreneurship and in advancement of transformative digital health technologies to reduce healthcare cost and improve personalized medicine.”
From 2003 to 2020 Dr. Savage was Co-Founder, Vice President of R&D, and Chief Medical Officer of Proteus Digital Health, co-inventing the world’s smallest medical device and demonstrating the power of integrated digital feedback to improve drug therapy effectiveness, helping the company achieve a “unicorn” valuation of $1.5 billion. In 2017 he won a landmark NDA approval from FDA authorizing the integration of silicon and software into a pharmaceutical product for the first time. From 1994-1999 Dr. Savage was Co-Founder, Vice President of R&D and Board Member of FemRx, a pioneer in minimally invasive surgery for women’s health (NASDAQ IPO, then acquired by Ethicon). From 1991-1994 he was Co-Founder, VicePresident, Clinical & Regulatory Affairs and Board Member of CardioRhythm, a pioneer in radiofrequency catheter ablation systems for treatment of heart rhythm disorders (acquired by Medtronic).
Since 2014, Dr. Savage has served on the board of the California Life Sciences Association, meeting regularly with federal and state legislators on health policy matters. He has testified to the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Abuse and the Opioid Epidemic and is a frequent keynote speaker on the topic of digital health. Dr. Savage is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council for the Boston University College of Engineering, an Associate of the Creative Destruction Labs at Oxford University, the University of Washington, and the University of British Columbia. He also advises several private companies.
Since 1995, Dr. Savage has served on the Town of Portola Valley Finance Committee, which he currently chairs. Since 2007, and excepting the COVID pandemic, he volunteers annually to provide medical care to the poor of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
George Savage holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering (Boston University), an MD (Tufts University) and an MBA (Stanford University). He is licensed to practice, medicine in California, Florida, and Ethiopia. He is a named inventor on over 50 issued patents.