Medispec

Avner Spector, CEO and Co-founder
05/24/2016

Avner Spector is the CEO and co-founder of Medispec, a medical technology company that specializes in extracorporeal shockwave therapy solutions. At clinics, medical centers, and hospitals in over 80 countries around the world, health care providers use Medispec’s systems to treat patients’ conditions in fields such as urology, cardiovascular medicine, and orthopedics. The company’s products are versatile, modular, and easy to use, and offer a high degree of mobility. Started in Tel Aviv, Israel, Medispec opened headquarters in the U.S. several years ago with the help of the Maryland/Israel Development Center (MIDC), a nonprofit organization that promotes trade and investment between Maryland and Israeli businesses and research institutions.

Avner Spector spoke with Barry Bogage, director of the MIDC, for this interview.

BARRY BOGAGE: What events in your life led you to start Medispec, and when did you first become interested in shockwave therapy?

AVNER SPECTOR: It depends how you look at it. I was a tank commander in my military service. I participated in the Yom Kippur war in the Golan Heights. I don’t know if it’s related or not related: my family had a factory that had developed fire extinguishing. They had developed the first explosion suppression for armored vehicle in the world. The idea was to be able to extinguish the explosion before it happened in the tank. That’s first when I learned about explosions and shockwaves and all those things. I graduated as a mechanical engineer from Beersheba University, and after that I worked a little bit with the family business and moved to work in the Timna Copper Mine near Eilat, and obviously this exposed me to explosion and also kidney disintegration—it’s part of the process of mining. After I decided it was too much to work with a big stone and those things, I decided to move to a small stone and I moved to kidney lithotripsy. But the reality is everything is coincidence. As a mechanical engineer, I started in this way and through that I became involved in a company in U.S. as engineer to develop a new device. The company went bankrupt, I went back to Israel, and they sent me an order of $20,000 and I opened my company and started from this purchase order and that’s where we are today.

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