Medical Advisory Board

James Cross, MD​

Former 18-year Vice President and head of National Medical Policy and Operations for Aetna Health Insurance. He was also the head of operations for National Precertification and Clinical Claims Review, Clinical Appeals and External Review. Dr. Cross received his MD from the University of Minnesota Medical school and did a residency in Pediatrics. His Background includes 12 years practicing emergency and general medicine. Jim has served on advisory council panels for several well-known national corporations and is a member of the board of directors for the population health alliance and served as its Secretary. He remains a member of many other medical boards and organizations, the most pertinent is the Executive Leadership Council of the National Association of Managed Care Physicians. Dr. Cross is now a full-time consultant and has his own consulting firm. He has committed to our board for the next four years and will be instrumental in helping us get our testing devise on major medical insurance plans and assist in making Saligard standard of care for primary care physicians to help diagnose and prevent acid reflux related diseases.

Rena Yadlapati, MD​

Dr. Rena Yadlapati is medical director of the Center for Esophageal Diseases at UC San Diego Health and treats gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and related conditions such as voice complaints (laryngopharyngeal reflux) and Barrett’s esophagus, swallowing disorders such as achalasia and esophageal motility disorders, and eosinophilic esophagitis. She performs upper GI endoscopies with dilation, EndoFLIP, pneumatic dilation for achalasia, as well as colonoscopies.

She has devoted her career to research in the field of GERD. She is a co-author of national guidelines for esophageal physiologic testing, the international recommendations for refractory GERD, and is actively funded by the NIH to study biomarkers and precision modeling for GERD. Dr Yadlapati and has done extensive research on Pepsin and is passionate about making testing for its presence standard of care in primary care physicians offices. Dr. Yadlapati will be involved in our trials and instrumental in helping design our pilot trial and large FDA trial.She received her medical degree and did her internal medicine training at UCLA and her Gastroenterology fellowship training at Northwestern University, including an advanced clinical and research fellowship in esophageal physiology. Rena Yadlapati is on the board of directors of the American College of Gastroenterology as well as the American Foregut Society.

Jasdeep Kaur, PhD​

Dr. Kaur received her dental degree in 2008 from Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkot India. She studied Forensic Odontology, Katholieke University Leuven, Belgium from 2010-2011 and received her PHD in Biomedical science; Salivary markers for detection of oral (pre) cancerous lesions in 2018. She is currently living in Denmark and continues to focus on researching Salivary biomarkers. She is highly published. Jasdeep is a Medical Advisor for L’avenour Health Limited and for Baseline Viral diagnostics in the USA. She is the CTO of Jasberry Health Care India and Health startup, Denmark and France. She is currently working with Dr. Rai in continued Salivary Biomarker research for acid reflux and has her own research team focusing on salivary biomarkers for a variety of cancers. She has been instrumental in working with Dr. Rai in developing our new camera technology which is producing 3 dimensional/holographic images for early detection of disease states deep in human tissue.

Betsy Gross, RN​

Betsy is Head of Global Health Policy and Development for Intuitive, where she is responsible for leading coverage, coding, and payment strategies to expand patient access for Intuitive’s portfolio globally. In addition, Betsy leads advisory strategy for Intuitive’s Emerging Technologies portfolio, supporting organic technology development and investment target evaluation. Betsy has over 30 years of industry experience in both the medical device and biopharmaceutical sectors, holding leadership positions at Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson (Acclarent), Intersect ENT, and others. She has led reimbursement and market access strategies for multiple technologies to secure billing codes, expand Medicare and private payer coverage, influence health technology assessment evaluations and coordinate government affairs initiatives to drive technology demand. Betsy has a B.S.N. from Villanova University and is a Certified Professional Coder. In 2019, she was highlighted as one of the Top 100 Women in MedTech by Medical Design and Outsourcing.