Joe Kiani

Joe Kiani founded Masimo, a global medical technology company, in 1989. He also serves as Chairman and CEO. Kiani’s desire to develop medical technology that improves patient care and decreases medical errors led him to co-invent what is known as modern pulse oximetry. His innovation overcame a problem the industry deemed “unsolvable” – traditional pulse oximetry’s unreliability during patient motion and low perfusion. Masimo Signal Extraction Technology® (SET®) helped to reduce false alarms by 95% and fundamentally improved the reliability of the “fifth vital sign.” With Masimo SET®, clinicians were able to reduce blindness in premature babies and more effectively screen them for critical congenital heart disease.

Kiani grew Masimo from a “garage start-up” into a successful publicly traded company that employs more than 8,000 people globally. He and his team hold over 600 patents and have introduced many firsts in noninvasive monitoring, hospital automation, connectivity, and telehealth. Masimo SET® is used to monitor more than 200 million patients a year. Kiani also founded Willow Labs, a health and wellness innovator, and is the co-founder of A Starting Point, a video-based civic engagement platform.

Kiani is the founder of the Patient Safety Movement Foundation, a nonprofit that works towards eliminating deaths from preventable medical errors around the world. He is also the founder of the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation, and Competition in Healthcare, dedicated to expanding access to quality healthcare.

In 2021, President Joe Biden appointed Kiani to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Kiani serves on several boards of directors. Kiani speaks at events globally, championing the rights of those who are not always empowered to speak for themselves.