My Credentials as an Entrepreneur
Executive Summary
Dual qualification in engineering (aerospace) and medicine (academic orthopedic surgeon)
Accomplished technologist in software, biotech and medtech. Founded or cofounded 13 startups in the Bay area and Singapore of which 2 Bay area startups have gone onto IPO.
I am currently Adjunct Professor at NUS teaching part time in the Department of Orthopedics and coteaching the BioDesign module at the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Advisor to a number of start up founders on business strategy and funding.
I have two and a half decades of experience in management, strategy and new venture creation from early stage start up to securing venture funding.
I am a driven entrepreneurial actuator , having the ability to build, nurture and inspire diversified teams of startup founders. I have extensive entreprenurial exposure having built strong relationships and network of businesses, angel investors, as well government agencies in Singapore and the Bay area.
My strong track record is evident from the number of surgery ready devices that I patented, developed and licenced to major medical device companies in the US. The successes in delivering surgery product are examplified by some of these products becaming the standard of surgical practice today. Balancing both financial and device certification requirements.
I believe in giving back to the public as well as to individual founders and serves as pro bono advisor to varied founders of startups and I also sits on award comittees of public funding agencies.
Education
B. A. Sc. University of Toronto (1971 Aerospace Engineering)
M. A. Sc. University of Toronto (1972 Aerospace Engineering)
M.D. University of Toronto (1978 Medicine)
Current Appointments
Adjunct Professor at NUS
Part time teaching at NUS in the Department of Orthopedics and
co-teaching the BioDesign module (BN3101 undergraduate and BN5101 graduate) at the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
co-teaching the BioDesign module (BN3101 undergraduate and BN5101 graduate) at the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
In December, 2023 I was invited by Singapore Enterprise to be a member of the FINAL EVALUATION PANEL FOR STARTUP SG TECH
20 years ago, I launched the BioDesign model BN3101 at NUS and taught this module for many years. This module was voted as the most valuable undergraduate module 10 years in a row. Testimonial verification is available from Prof Leo Hwa Liang head of administration at Dept of Biomedical Engineering.
Past academic appointments
Sep 1988 – Sep 1991: Associate Professor, McMaster University, Canada
Sep 1988 – Sep 1991: Associate Professor, McMaster University, Canada
Sep 1985 – Sep 1988: Assistant Professor, McGill University, Canada
Appointed on the Governing board of Mechanobiology Institute, NUS as appointed by the Ministry of Health for a term of 5 years (2014)
Relevant Administrative and Entrepreneural Experience
5 years as the director of the technology transfer office at NUS, the predecessor of the present ILO office, NUS.
Then promoted as CEO of NUS Enterprise, the equivalent of an NUS vice president of entrepreneurship. I was appointment by the then President of NUS Prof Shih Choon Fong.
Recent Activities
In April 2024 at the invitation of Singapore BioDesign, A*STAR I gave a 4 hour workshop on IP Fundamentals followed by tutorials for the BioDesign fellow.
The same workshop was also given to the undergraduates and graduates of the BioDesign module at NUS
Successful Deployments
The above image is a bone cement vacuum mixing system that I designed, patented and licensed to Zimmer Biomet, the largest orthopedic device manufacturer in the US. It it now a standard in surgical practice for joint replacement surgery. A Google search using my name (Chan Kwan Ho) and the term bone cement will show many of my patents and work in bone cement indicating that I am a world authority in this subject matter.
During the life of the patent, I was receiving US $250,000 for 20 years
Many of my 40 issued US patents have been commercialized as surgery ready products and some of which have become standard of surgical practice today. Second and third generations of these products are now being developed. I am in the process of forming a medtech incubator in Singapore to replicate the success of VentureMD and Surgical Frontiers, my previous US medtech incubators . A write up of this new Singapore incubator is included here for reference only.
My last invention for a key hole surgery repair of shoulder tendon was voted as the most promising sports medicine technology in 2019. This was acquired by a major US sport medicine company for US$10 million on 7 Feb 2022. Documentation on file for inspection.
I founded and self funded in Singapore a document management startup WizFolio/WizPatent 25 years ago. Jeffrey Tiong was my student/intern at this start up at NUS incubator space. Jeffrey learned everything from me and founded a competing company PatSnap. I mentored him and his company for 20 years to become a highly successful patent document company. At the last round of venture funding it was valued at a USD billion dollar company. This is a rare Singapore software unicorn company with USD 20 million in annual revenue. Testimonials from the CEO of PatSnap are available on file for inspection. See this Straits Times article about this software unicorn in Singapore.
WizFolio is the first Web 2.0 web application that has the look and feel of a desktop application. We contacted Google through its vice president. However because we were a small startup company, Google was not interested in collaborating.
20 years later Google Drive appeared and looks very similar to WizFolio which make us wonder if Google has cloned WizFolio.
WizFolio basically is Google Drive on steriod.All assets of WizFolio was acquired by iGroup, the large supplier of academic publication for Asia. I worked with iGroup to develop WizFolio into CiteReady.com a world class journal reference manager and an online citation tool. I continue to recieve annual royalty from iGroup for WizFolio for my work as a lead consultant for iGroup for this technology. You can subscribe for a free trial account at www.citeready.com. Testimony available from CEO of iGroup upon request.
In 2019 I founded Humanyx, a Singapore biotechnology company. A*STAR used the antibody library from Humanyx to develop an antibody library for Covid and for other emerging infectious diseases.
Please see my write up here on why this is a significant Singapore biotech achievement https://www.aceblaster.com/covid
I have done 20 years of research on stem cell differentiation on nanofiber membranes.
My Google Scholar Link with academic publication list.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=X6lN9_kAAAAJ&hl=en
Commercialization Readiness
When we founded VentureMD as a medical device incubator
VentureMD take an idea and develope it into a surgery product.
VentureMD take an idea and develope it into a surgery product.
VentureMD was funded with the founders' own money without any VC funding. We studied all Venture Capital funded projects and determine what are the critical factors that make the funding a success.
We found that the single most important critical success factor is dependent on the degree of due diligence that was done on the project.
The best way to view a snap shot of the due diligence is by way of a radar chart.
I have created a way to automatically generate a radar chart in Google Chart when certain milestones are reached.
