Approximately 10 million femoral catheterization procedures are performed annually worldwide. Despite many years of effort and numerous entries into the vascular closure arena, manual compression remains the mainstay for hemostasis following sheath removal.

Lackluster adoption of the various devices designed to facilitate hemostasis is based on a number of market concerns. These include the potential risk of complications imposed by implantable devices, the extra physician time needed to place them, and the added procedural expense imposed by closure devices.

Innovasa Corporation was founded in March 2005 to address these market concerns with the development of the Stat*Seal™ hemostat. Stat*Seal™ facilitates secure vascular hemostasis following femoral access procedures, and offers a new proprietary approach to assist in stopping bleeding following sheath removal that provides a safe, easy to apply and cost effective solution. Stat*Seal™ has been cleared by the FDA for commercial use.


Patrick Bergin, age 54, is co-inventor of Innovasa’s portfolio of devices. He was a practicing clinical interventional cardiologist for 18 years and has extensive clinical and research experience. In 1999 he founded Endovascular Research and directed numerous interventional cardiology research trials as Principal Investigator through this organization. As President of Endovascular Research he created an ongoing and profitable research organization with numerous active studies. He is published in several medical journals including recent publications in the New England Journal of Medicine. He holds a B.A. in chemistry from Columbia University and an M.D. from Dartmouth Medical School.

Dr. Wensel, age 46, is co-inventor of Innovasa’s portfolio of devices. He has been a practicing neuroradiologist for 11 years and has extensive clinical and research experience. From 1997 to 1999, he was director of MRI at Newport Beach Diagnostic Center in Newport Beach, California. He was a Partner and Shareholder of a private practice group in Eugene, Oregon from 1999 until 2004 when he left the group to develop an outpatient imaging center. Since 2004 he has been a principal and active in Willamette Valley Imaging in Eugene, Oregon. Dr. Wensel is the co-inventor and first author on all six of the patents relating to the MERCI Retriever (Concentric Medical, Inc.), the first mechanical device to be approved by the FDA for treatment of embolic stroke. He joined with Patrick Bergin, M.D. in March 2005 to form Innovasa Corporation. He received his medical degree and a Ph.D. in neuroanatomy from the University of Iowa.

Dr. Bottum, age 45, began his career in 1991 at Scimed Life Systems as a Product Manager, identifying new markets and managing product development initiatives. In June 1995, he joined Spine-Tech, Inc. as Director of Marketing, where he managed the launch of a series of new products which grew revenue from $3 million to $80 million within 15 months. In February 1998, he joined cMore Medical Solutions as Vice President of Sales where he managed the launch of an information technology product in the medical field. Dr. Bottum joined Jundt Associates as an analyst in August 1999 and became a portfolio manager in March 2000. He became President of Acuo Technologies, LLC from January 2000 until May 2005. As a Founder of this information technology infrastructure firm (principally focused on medical applications) he secured three rounds of financing totaling $5.3 million. Dr. Bottum achieved cash flow positive results in October 2003 and annual profitability in 2004. He secured intellectual property in Europe for application aware routing. He applied an infrastructure to the medical imaging market to create the Grid Computing Network for large enterprise customers. Dr. Bottum pursued the dual role of running Acuo and operating as a Portfolio Manager for Jundt Mutual Funds and Southways Hedge Fund. His portfolio management thesis focused on long/short U.S. equities in large, mid-size, and emerging growth companies. He received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of Wisconsin and his Doctorate of Business Administration from the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.