Larry Lawson President & CEO

eCardio Founder Larry Lawson talks about how he's reinventing his cardiac device company as he faces lower reimbursements.

Lamar University will award the honorary doctor of humane letters to Larry Wayne Lawson, chairman, president and chief executive officer of eCardio Diagnostics, at fall commencement Dec. 15.  Lawson will accept his honorary doctorate during the morning ceremony.  After attending Lamar in the 1960s and switching careers from music to health care 42 years ago, Lawson founded eCardio Diagnostics in 2004. Today, eCardio is the leading arrhythmia-monitoring company in America, providing flexible, fast and accurate diagnoses to physicians and patients worldwide, specializing in atrial fibrillation detection and analysis.  His company has been ranked as one of the 50 fastest-growing technology companies in the Houston-Gulf Coast area and in the INC. 500/5000 as one of the Top 500 fastest-growing companies in America from 2009 through 2012. Ernst & Young honored Lawson as its Health Science Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009.  Lawson divides his time between Jonestown, near Austin, and Houston, the corporate headquarters of eCardio Diagnostics. He is active nationally in the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology and Heart Rhythm Society.  Attending Lamar from 1963 through 1967, he was elected cheerleader, played trumpet with jazz and marching bands and performed throughout Southeast Texas. He grew up in Bridge City, where he learned to play piano at age 5, wrote music and copyrighted his first songs at 13, met Johnny and Edgar Winter and performed with them through high school. He extended his repertoire to clarinet and trumpet, playing lead trumpet in the Bridge City High School Band when he was recruited to Lamar.  By his junior year at LU, Lawson was so active on the music scene that he decided to devote all his time to his bands and their success. That led to a career in music, including The Clique - which opened for most of the top bands of the era and was honored in 2008 with induction into the Museum of the Gulf Coast's Music Hall of Fame. The Clique sold more than 5 million records. Lawson began his health care career with Johnson & Johnson, excelling at every sales, sales management and marketing level with J&J and other companies. In 1980, he founded Mesco Inc., an international sales and marketing firm specializing in sales for American and European medical manufacturers, developing markets throughout Latin America, Europe and Mid-East countries. In 1983, he founded LifeMed Technologies Inc., building the business to more than $7 million annually in less than six years. Changing his focus to cardiac arrhythmia monitoring services in 2000, Lawson founded Diagnostic Monitoring Associates.  Lamar University will award the honorary doctor of humane letters to Larry Wayne Lawson, chairman, president and chief executive officer of eCardio Diagnostics, at fall commencement Dec. 15. 

Larry Lawson President & CEO In his role as eCardio's Chief Executive Officer, Larry Lawson leads the company's strategic direction and vision. With more than 35 years of medical device and healthcare industry experience, Lawson draws on his extensive market development expertise to identify opportunities to advance arrhythmia diagnostic solutions. An experienced entrepreneur, Lawson was founder and CEO of Diagnostic Monitoring Associates (DMA), a national marketing and sales firm specializing in the delivery of cardiac services to physician practices. Prior to DMA, he held various positions within healthcare companies including executive management responsibilities in sales, marketing, mergers and acquisitions, market development and manufacturing. With early career experience at Johnson & Johnson, Edward Weck & Co. and Deseret Medical, Lawson achieved success with several early-stage medical companies including Life Med Technologies and Futuremed Interventional.

"eCardio's representatives that take calls at our 24-hour Monitoring Center do a phenomenal job of assisting patients with their monitoring experience," said eCardio's President and Chief Executive Officer, Larry Lawson. "However, some patients are visual learners and we believe that providing this option will help ease anxiety about certain aspects of the monitoring process and ultimately improve patient compliance." The video series provides patients with step-by-step instructions on critical elements of the study such as the placement of electrodes, sending in manual recordings when experiencing symptoms, and changing the batteries so that data capture is continuous. "Physicians depend on us to provide data necessary for making an accurate arrhythmia diagnosis and we believe that the new video series will simplify the patient experience to the extent possible regardless of the length of time they are required to wear the monitor," Lawson said.