Our founders

Hong Tan, PhD, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, began his entrepreneurial career in 2000 when he founded Wave Crossing, a fiber optics company that developed a self-focus lens technology widely used in the optic fiber networks. In 2001, Hong founded FortéBio, where he led the creation of the Bio-layer Interferometry technology. Before starting his entrepreneurial endeavor, he worked for several data storage companies, including Iomega, Seagate, and Maxtor. Hong was responsible for the control system for the High Energy Imaging Device, a NASA space telescope project. He received Ph.D. and MSEE from Auburn University, BSEE from Xi’an Jiao Tong University, and EMBA from Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business.

Bob Zuk, Founder and Chief Technology Officer, is respected in the life science and clinical diagnostics industries for his repeated success in integrating biochemistry with device design to provide elegantly simple solutions to challenging analytical problems. His contributions encompass diverse applications—from biosensors on the Octet platform (FortéBio) and Threshold instrument (Molecular Devices) for life science applications, to ultrasound enhanced gene delivery in myocardial and skeletal angiogenesis (Pharmasonics), to point-of-care cardiac marker tests (First Medical) and AccuLevel (Syva), one of the first commercially available, instrument-free, quantitative assay for therapeutic drug monitoring. Bob has a portfolio of more than 60 U.S. patents and pending applications. He received his B.S. in Biology from University of California, Riverside.

Continuing a history of innovation

The history of Silicon Valley is the history of technology— semiconductors and genetic engineering are just two example—and of how technology has been and continues to be applied toward improving everyday living. The name, Silicon Valley, refers to the silicon-based transistors in the 1950s, but is more often associated with innovations in semiconductors, pioneered by Williams Shockley. Many of the early pioneers—Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, to name a few—are still here today, as are the newer entries— Apple, Google, Facebook, eBay, PayPal, Yahoo, Tesla. Just as important are the many biotechnology innovators— Genentech being the best known and one company that still retains its founding name—that charted new territories in biopharmaceuticals, genomics, devices diagnostics. With this history come a critical mass of talent, capital and, importantly, a culture of entrepreneurship that is so vital to new ideas. It is therefore no accident that Hong Tan, PhD and Bob Zuk, the founders of ET Healthcare, choose Palo Alto, California, as their headquarters.

Translating technology into products

The Pylon platform is the first implementation of ET Healthcare’s proprietary lab-on-the-tip technology, designed to bring immunoassay performance typical associated with central lab analyzers to the near-patient setting. This means addressing specific requirements of near-patient testing such as reduced facility requirements for space, plumbing and electricity, and lower demand on human resources such as trained operators or number of staff. Key features such as the absence of fluidics and the single-use Pylon Test Strip that includes all reagents for a specific assay are the hallmark of the simple, easy-to-use and easy-to-maintain Pylon instrument platform. ET Healthcare also took the nextstep in lowering specimen requirements. By enabling whole blood analysis, specimen handling is simplified; yet, there is no compromise in performance with the designed-in lack of interference with red blood cells. By reducing the volume of patient specimen needed, pediatric testing is easier and reagent use is lower, translating into cost savings. Currently, ET Healthcare is working on implementing our proprietary technology to life sciences research and biopharmaceutical development, where the amplified analytical power will accelerate discovery and the efficiency in assay development and implementation will lower costs.