A decade ago, I experienced the worst back pain episode of my life. The silver lining was that it caused me to discover the core muscles and how when used effectively, they can be so essential to back pain rehab, athletic performance improvement, and injury prevention. However, while the core muscles receive so much attention, there is a lot of misunderstanding as to how and when to best use them. I founded Alert Core, Inc. with the goal of developing a wearable device to help users connect with, train, and most effectively use their core muscles. Alert Core is a MedTech company, and I’ve discovered there are so many unique challenges in establishing a company in MedTech compared with other industries. In this talk, I’ll introduce our patented system and share things I’ve learned climbing up the MedTech Mountain.

Gregory Uehara received the B.S.E.E degree from the University of Washington, Seattle, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley in EECS in 1989 and 1993, respectively. From 1993 to 2000, he was Assistant and then Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. During his sabbatical, he decided to return to industry and moved to Austin, Texas to become Director of Engineering for Wireless Products at Silicon Laboratories. Following this, he took on technical leadership and product development roles at both another public company (Marvell Semiconductor) as well as startups and spent a full year as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Austin Ventures when it was the third largest VC in the US. In 2012, he founded Alert Core, Inc. He has gained significant experience with patents through serving on patent committees and through Alert Core. He also returned to Hawai‘i in 2012 and lives in Kailua with his family. He is currently a Consultant to the IC industry and working to move Alert Core forward.