Medical Developments International appoints new CEO

Melbourne-based Medical Developments International (ASX:MVP, MDI) has appointed Dr Simon Fisher as its new CEO, starting today.

Fisher will replace Chris Weaver who resigned as managing director and CEO in July to take up an executive management position with a bank.

Fisher has experience in medical marketing and clinical trial design and implementation having worked for seven years with Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Australia. While working there he gained experience in the international registration of drugs and recruited and managed a medical marketing team in Australia.

"We needed somebody that had business development experience, but could also talk to the doctors, and who had regulatory experience on top of that," said MDI chairman David Williams. "He was just such a standout, compared with everybody else we saw. So we're really bullish about it,"

Fisher is a registered medical practitioner, a former president and current executive member of the Australian Pharmaceutical Physicians Association, and a member of the Australian Society of Medical Research.

Williams said that MDI expects Fisher to "get another indication on the board" for the company's Penthrox Inhaler which is currently used for pre-hospital or emergency pain relief and in dentistry.

The Penthrox Inhaler is a pain-relieving device, which delivers analgesic methoxyflurane directly to patients via a distinctive green whistle.

The company also expects Fisher to get "sales started in the new indication in Australia and New Zealand," said Williams.

"We expect to see product registration in a number of countries in the Middle East, and we're reasonably confident of also getting our product registered in Pakistan in the very near future as well, within months," said Williams. "We expect him to lead and speed up trials that we've currently designed for FDA registration in the US, to the extent that it can be done."

Williams also said Fisher will also be expected to get the company's medical devices, such as its asthma products, "into the North American and the European markets."

"We're currently looking for distributors for those products in both of those jurisdictions and we hope that we might be in a position to sign at least one of those in the very near future," said Williams.

Williams said that MDI should see a significant increase in sales this year and a very significant increase in profit.

"We were profitable this financial year, but just, after spending $1.3 million on registration and marketing and so forth," said Williams. "The way we're going this year with dental sales and our registration, we expect those sales and profits will be significantly up."