About James Lico
In April 2020, Lico discussed Fortive's efforts to address the PPE shortage during the COVID-19 pandemic. He stated that the company's ASP business was using existing hospital sterilization systems to decontaminate N95 masks in 95 minutes, turning on capacity created by reduced elective surgeries. Lico described the process as a local issue, noting that Fortive had authorizations in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, and that masks could be sterilized twice after initial use, potentially enabling millions of masks of daily capacity. He emphasized that the company was focused on helping frontline workers.
In a 2018 discussion, Lico spoke about innovation at Fortive, describing work with growth accelerator teams to develop new ideas. He said the company aimed to understand customer pain points to create "off the beaten path" solutions and was exploring a centralized "port" to provide shared skills, such as data science, to operating companies while keeping innovation close to customers. Lico acknowledged that innovation was "a little messy" and emphasized the importance of fast-cycle prototyping and experimentation.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from James Lico's recent appearances.
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Transcript (7 segments)
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James Lico0:10
Announced this week is that our ASP business, as you mentioned, is utilizing the sterilization systems that exist today in hospitals to be able to decontaminate masks, utilizing the capacity that exists today in the hospital. So one of the powerful parts about this is that the capacity exists today. As we heard in the previous caller, surgeries are down at this point, elective surgeries are down, and that really has created capacity with our sterilization equipment that resides in the hospitals today. And so we're able to turn that capacity up and decontaminate it in 95 minutes.
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Interviewer0:45
I keep wondering, Jim, if we're going to... one of the ways we're gonna change after this crisis is we're all gonna want to sterilize a lot more than we used to, equipment.
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James Lico1:11
Really an expert in infection prevention, principally sterilizing surgical instruments and equipment in the hospital, and that's really been our focus. I think as we think about the broader opportunity, for sure there's going to be opportunities for more sterilization, but I think right now what we're really focused on, the incredible work that our inventors and our medical affairs team did at ASP, was really in a very quick amount of time to create the process so that hospitals could turn that capacity on today. And I think that's whether it's a business opportunity long term, we're really focused on helping those frontline workers.
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Interviewer1:47
How's, Jim, with just quickly, we're just showing some of the countries that you're operating in to sterilize these masks. Is there much international trade of these masks?
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James Lico2:11
Hospitals in the US and we have similar authorizations in those countries, like the EU. So we're really focused on N95 masks. There's a number of manufacturers, and so we're really part of our technology process was to make sure we could fit with both N95 masks as well as those equivalents in those countries as well, thankfully.
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Interviewer2:29
How many times, really quickly, how many times can you sterilize an N95 mask and keep it usable? Is it unlimited?
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James Lico2:36
No, it's happening in the... two times, twice more after the initial use. And that really turns on millions of masks a day of capacity once the hospitals start to turn on that capacity here in the coming weeks and months.
