MINNEAPOLIS, Dec. 02, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Skyline Medical Inc. (NASDAQ:SKLN) (“Skyline” or “the Company”), producer of the FDA-approved STREAMWAY® System for automated, direct-to-drain medical fluid disposal, today announced changes in executive management and the board of directors. Dr. Carl Schwartz, who currently serves as executive chairman, has been named the Company’s chief executive officer and will continue to serve as a director. Richard Gabriel, co-founder and chief operating officer of GLG Pharma, has been appointed to the Company’s board of directors, bringing the number of directors to six. Both appointments are effective immediately.
Dr. Schwartz became a director of the Company in March 2016 and was Skyline’s interim chief executive officer from May 2016 until his appointment as executive chairman in September 2016. He is a longtime stockholder of Skyline. Dr. Schwartz has owned and managed highly successful dental groups in Michigan, beginning with one practice in 1966 and overseeing an expansion to 14 offices at the time he left the active practice of dentistry in 1988. He currently owns two dental practices in Michigan.
In 1988 Dr. Schwartz joined a family business, becoming chief executive officer of Plastics Research Corporation, a Flint, Mich. manufacturer of structural foam molding, a low pressure injection molding process. While there, he led its growth from $2 million in revenues and 20 employees, to its becoming the largest manufacturer of structural foam molding products under one roof in the U.S., with more than $60 million in revenues and 300 employees when he retired in 2001.
Dr. Schwartz previously served on the board of Delta Dental Corporation of Michigan, was a member of the Michigan Advisory Board for Liberty Mutual Insurance and was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Florida. He holds BA and DDS degrees from the University of Detroit.
Commenting on his appointment, Dr. Schwartz said, “I am very pleased to be assuming the CEO position at this exciting inflection point in Skyline Medical’s strategic plan. We have made a great deal of progress in recent weeks with the STREAMWAY System, including new domestic sales, the approval by Health Canada and the expansion of our global distribution network. We expect to receive CE Mark for STREAMWAY in the coming weeks, and have engaged GLG Pharma for distribution in the U.K. and Central Europe.
“With the promise of using STREAMWAY for patient diagnostics and a joint venture directed at mobile operating rooms and other U.S. government purchasers, our growth prospects are better than they have been in a very long time. I look forward to executing our business plan with the support of a talented management team and of our board of directors,” Dr. Schwartz added.
Richard Gabriel has more than 40 years of relevant healthcare experience, including two decades of executive leadership and as a director and a consultant to development-stage companies. In addition serving as chief operating officer of GLG Pharma since 2009, from 2003 until 2009 Mr. Gabriel was chief executive officer of DNAPrint Genomics and DNAPrint Pharmaceuticals. He is currently a director of Windgap Medical, a Massachusetts-based medical device company that is developing a compact and easy to use epinephrine autoinjector for the treatment of anaphylaxis. Mr. Gabriel holds an MBA from Suffolk University in Boston, and a BS in Chemistry from Ohio Dominican College in Columbus.
“We are thrilled to welcome Richard to the Skyline board of directors,” said Thomas J. McGoldrick, Skyline’s chairman. “In the short time since we announced our diagnostic development and distribution agreement with GLG Pharma, we have come to know Richard and his deep healthcare industry knowledge and experience. We look forward to benefiting from his counsel as we continue to execute on our milestones.”
About the STREAMWAY System
Skyline's revolutionary, FDA-cleared STREAMWAY system is the first true direct-to-drain fluid disposal system designed specifically for medical applications, such as radiology, endoscopy, urology and cystoscopy procedures. It connects directly to a facility's plumbing system to automate the collection, measurement and disposal of waste fluids. As of September 30, 2016, Skyline Medical customers have installed 96 STREAMWAY systems in 50 facilities across 19 states.
The STREAMWAY minimizes human intervention for better safety and improves compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and other regulatory agency safety guidelines. It also provides unlimited capacity for increased efficiency in the operating room, which leads to greater profitability. Furthermore, the STREAMWAY eliminates canisters to reduce overhead costs and provides greater environmental stewardship by helping to eliminate the approximately 50 million potentially disease-infected canisters that go into landfills annually in the U.S. For a demonstration please visit www.skylinemedical.com or call 855-785-8855.
About Skyline Medical
Skyline Medical produces a fully automated, patented, FDA-cleared waste fluid disposal system that virtually eliminates staff exposure to blood, irrigation fluid and other potentially infectious fluids found in the healthcare environment. Antiquated manual fluid handling methods that require hand carrying and emptying filled fluid canisters present an exposure risk and potential liability. Skyline Medical's STREAMWAY System fully automates the collection, measurement and disposal of waste fluids and is designed to: 1) reduce overhead costs to hospitals and surgical centers; 2) improve compliance with OSHA and other regulatory agency safety guidelines; 3) improve efficiency in the operating room, and radiology and endoscopy departments, thereby leading to greater profitability; and 4) provide greater environmental stewardship by helping to eliminate the approximately 50 million potentially disease-infected canisters that go into landfills each year in the U.S. For additional information, please visit www.skylinemedical.com.
Forward-looking Statements
Certain of the matters discussed in this announcement contain forward-looking statements that involve material risks to and uncertainties in the Company's business that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by the statements made herein. Such risks and uncertainties include, among other things, current negative operating cash flows and a need for additional funding to finance our operating plan; the terms of any further financing, which may be highly dilutive and may include onerous terms; unexpected costs and operating deficits, and lower than expected sales and revenues; uncertain willingness and ability of customers to adopt new technologies and other factors that may affect further market acceptance, if our product is not accepted by our potential customers, it is unlikely that we will ever become profitable, adverse economic conditions; the potential delisting of the Company’s common stock on The Nasdaq Capital Market as a result of the Company’s failures to comply with listing standards, in which case the liquidity of our common stock would likely be impaired and there would likely be a reduction in our coverage by security analysts and the news media, thereby resulting in lower prices for our common stock than might otherwise prevail; adverse results of any legal proceedings; the volatility of our operating results and financial condition; inability to attract or retain qualified senior management personnel, including sales and marketing personnel; our ability to establish and maintain the proprietary nature of our technology through the patent process, as well as our ability to possibly license from others patents and patent applications necessary to develop products; the Company's ability to implement its long range business plan for various applications of its technology, including the possibility that the development of applicable technologies by GLG Pharma, LLC will be delayed, will not occur or will not receive applicable regulatory approvals on a timely basis; the Company’s ability to consummate its joint venture with Electronic On-Ramp, Inc.; the Company's ability to enter into agreements with any necessary marketing and/or distribution partners; the impact of competition, the obtaining and maintenance of any necessary regulatory clearances applicable to applications of the Company's technology; and management of growth and other risks and uncertainties that may be detailed from time to time in the Company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available for review at www.sec.gov. This is not a solicitation to buy or sell securities and does not purport to be an analysis of the Company's financial position. See the Company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, and subsequent reports and other filings at www.sec.gov.