Our Story
Founded by three people, Christopher Jerry, Leo Matsiev and James Bennett, brought together by their shared resolve of preventing the unimaginable tragedies and deaths all too frequently occurring from intravenous (IV) medication errors.
Chris, a medical technology executive, tragically lost his two year old daughter Emily, in 2006, to a preventable IV compounding mistake by a pharmacy technician. Sadly, Emily’s “fatal dose” was her last chemotherapy treatment for an abdominal tumor and happened on the same day Chris and his wife were looking forward to taking Emily home from the hospital to celebrate the fact that Emily appeared cancer free, the tumor had completely disappeared.
James and Leo, two Silicon Valley physicist-entrepreneurs became aware of this problem after James’s elderly father endured an IV drug error while hospitalized. As they began digging into this, they were shocked to find many accounts, including Emily’s, and were astounded at the enormous loss of life due to preventable medical error, with medication errors comprising the largest percentage of those deaths, nearly half.
Following Emily’s medication error, Chris established the Emily Jerry Foundation in his daughter’s memory, with a focus on systems, processes, protocols and solutions to minimize this inherent “human error component of medicine.”
James and Leo invented and patented an innovative sensor system for verification of IV fluids and founded a company in 2008 to commercialize this revolutionary technology
In 2011, Chris and the founders were introduced and immediately, he became a very strong supporter and advocate of the company’s technology.
This company, (SEA Medical Systems, Inc), headquartered in Silicon Valley, grew to 38 employees. Despite all of the initial success, the company unfortunately failed in late 2013 and it appeared that the commercialization of this life saving technology might never happen.
Leo and James never gave up “fighting the good fight” of bringing their IV safety technology to the world and, in late 2019, finally managed to re-acquire all intellectual property and assets of their former company.
At this point, they reconnected with Chris and together established EJ Health Technologies in honor of Emily, keeping her story always as a beacon, illuminating the company’s pathway forward.
EJ Health Technologies is committed to stopping IV medication errors, before they happen, so that events like the one that took Emily’s life never happen to anyone else ever again.
