ApiJect Announces Ed Kelley, PhD, as Chief Global Health Officer for ApiJect Systems and Affiliated Organizations

Dr. Kelley joins efforts with Marc Koska OBE, inventor of the K1 auto-disable syringe, on future products to improve injection safety in all markets

STAMFORD, Conn., March 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ApiJect Systems, Corp., a medical technology public-benefit corporation providing a platform that enables pharmaceutical and biotech companies to efficiently fill-finish their injectable medicines in prefilled delivery systems, has announced that Edward Kelley, PhD, has joined the company as Chief Global Health Officer for ApiJect and as a leader of its related organizations, ApiLabs and the ApiJect Global Initiative.

At ApiJect, Dr. Kelley helps lead the company's effort to develop upstream product ideas that serve both global markets and individual patients, and he establishes and manages relationships with important government and non-profit healthcare providers to nations around the world.

Dr. Kelley also serves as the Chief Global Health Officer of ApiLabs, an ApiJect sister company that performs ground-level R&D on new, scalable medical devices created on the ApiJect Platform. Marc Koska OBE, inventor of the widely-used K1 auto-disable syringe and co-founder of ApiJect, serves as the lead designer at ApiLabs. Together, Dr. Kelley will work with Mr. Koska and expert teams at ApiLabs on future injection devices that improve injection safety and access for patients in all markets.

Dr. Kelley is also Executive Director of the ApiJect Global Initiative, a group within ApiJect focused on carrying out the company's founding mission of promoting awareness and collaborative problem-solving for injection safety and global market access.

Dr. Kelley joins ApiJect after 15 years with the World Health Organization (WHO), most recently as Director of Integrated Health Services, where he was a prominent leader of WHO's work on the COVID-19 response, on the Access to COVID Tools (ACT) Accelerator, and on the United Nations Task Team on the Socioeconomic Response to COVID-19.

In addition, Dr. Kelley managed a wide portfolio at WHO with active programs in clinical services, health systems policy and services regulation, and patient safety and quality of care and health services performance monitoring. This included leading WHO's efforts on Injection Safety and the Safe Injection Global Network (SIGN). His work at WHO further involved collaborations with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI the Vaccine Alliance, the Rockefeller Foundation, and The Global Fund for HIV, TB and Malaria, among others.

Dr. Kelley remains passionate about the world's ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic and other global health issues. In the past twelve months, he has spoken to major news services on several occasions about the state of the pandemic and ongoing response efforts (see https://apiject.com/press/ for further information). In addition, he and his Global Initiative team recently released a first draft of a document that compares 50 commonly-held beliefs about COVID-19 against publicly available data. The first edition is available at https://injectionsafetyaccess.com/50-covid-beliefs/.

Prior to joining WHO, Dr. Kelley served for nearly a decade as Director of the U.S. National Healthcare Reports for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, reporting to the Director of that agency director and directly to the Secretary of HHS. During his time with HHS, Dr. Kelley was seconded to direct the 28-country Health Care Quality Improvement (HCQI) Project of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. Prior to his HHS role, he served as a Senior Researcher and Quality Assurance Advisor for the USAID-sponsored Quality Assurance Project (QAP) and Partnerships for Health Reform Project Plus (PHRPlus).

Dr. Kelley received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he served as an Associate Professor, and earned his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College.  

In welcoming Dr. Kelley, ApiJect Chairman Jay Walker stated, "Ed Kelley is among the world's most accomplished leaders in public health. We are fortunate he has decided to join ApiJect's team, where he elevates our role in addressing critical needs in global heath. As a public benefit corporation founded to address injection safety and primary healthcare needs, ApiJect appreciates Ed's history of strengthening primary health care and making health services safe around the world. This sterling record will ensure that ApiJect and ApiLabs fulfill their mission to make essential injectable medicines and vaccines a realistic possibility that is well within reach for all communities, especially the most difficult to serve."

ApiJect Co-Founder and ApiLabs Head Product Designer Marc Koska OBE added "I am delighted to have Ed join our team. His knowledge of global health, plus his passion and commitment adds to the capability of the ApiJect organization. We both share a deep-seated belief that to really improve injection safety around the world, we need to improve the injection devices and drug containers that serve these markets, in addition to awareness, training, and other important efforts governments and organizations have historically focused on."

ABOUT APIJECT SYSTEMS, CORP.
ApiJect Systems, Corp. is a public-benefit medical technology company working to bring prefilled, single-dose injections to more people in every market. The ApiJect Platform enables pharmaceutical and biotech companies to design scalable prefilled injectors and efficiently fill-finish them with their injectable drug products. This can be done either on one of their own ApiJect-licensed Blow-Fill-Seal packaging lines or at one of our world-class manufacturing partners.

Learn more at www.apiject.com.

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