Visit of Dr Prakash Raj Regmi to Edwards Lifesciences Foundation headquarter, Irvine,USA
National program director of Nepal Heart Foundation (NHF) Dr P R Regmi during his travel to USA received invitation to visit and meet the administrative steering committee (ASC) team of Edwards Lifesciences Foundation (ELF). The visit was done on 7thof August 2025.For NHF it was a great opportunity to visit the ELF headquarter and meet with the ASC team of ELF.
The following was the meeting agenda fixed by Amanda Fowler, the Executive Director of ELF.
Agenda: 7th Aug 2925
11:00 – 11:45 a.m. – meeting with Edwards Lifesciences Foundation team and members of the foundation’s Administrative Steering Committee (ASC)
- Introductions (5 minutes)
- Overview of Edwards partnership with Nepal Heart Foundation – Amanda (10 minutes)
- Overview of Nepal Heart Foundation and discussion – Dr.Regmi – (30 minutes)
11:45 – 12:00 p.m. – transition to lunch at the café
12:00 – 1:00 p.m. – lunch with foundation team
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. – heart valve manufacturing and campus tour with foundation team
List of the attendees. .
| Name | Title | |
| Amanda Fowler | VP, Global Corporate Giving • Public Affairs | amanda_fowler@edwards.com |
| Kristen Wehage | SrDir, Contracts Management Center of E • Legal | kristen_wehage@edwards.com |
| Lauren Spiegel | VP, Marketing • TMTT | lauren_spiegel@edwards.com |
| Rita Birchard | VP, Marketing • Advanced Technology | rita_birchard@edwards.com |
| StefaanPoortman | Sr. Director, Global Corporate Giving Strategy • Public Affairs | stefaan_poortman@edwards.com |
| FarzadAzimpour | SVP, Strategic Innovation • Advanced Technology | farzad_azimpour@edwards.com |
| Linda Park | SVP, Assoc Gen Counsel & Sec • Legal | linda_park@edwards.com |
| GeorgisTzortzakis | Dir, Finance • Public Affairs | georgis_tzortzakis@edwards.com |
| Seth Clancy | SVP, GHER THV • Public Affairs | seth_clancy@edwards.com |
| Danni Lin | Sr Analyst, Finance • Public Affairs | danni_lin@edwards.com |
| Linda Battista | Exec Assistant • Public Affairs | linda_battista@edwards.com |
| Andrew Greene | VP, Strategy • Global Supply Chain | andrew_greene@edwards.com |
| Swathi Ravi | Dir, Exploration • Advanced Technology | swathi_ravi@edwards.com |
Andrew Greene was the one that wasn’t able to join in-person but joined via Teams from ELF Utah office.
The meeting started with the introduction of the attendees. This was followed by speech of Amanda who gave an overview of the partnership between ELF and NHF. She highlighted upon the activities that NHF has been performing in partnership with ELF to meet the targets of every heartbeat matters (EHM) campaign. She praised the work of NHF stating that the NHF team were the champions in screening for structural heart diseases (SHD) and serving the underserved. She described how excited she was when she participated in the screening camps during her visit to Nepal. She named NHF as one of the best performing partner organisations which ELF has been funding. She also described how the child Kalpana Tamang was detected as a SHD case during the camp in which she participated. She expressed her happiness to know that Kalpana was successfully operated and she started smiling. Her face always looked serious before surgery.
She handed over a token of appreciation on behalf of ELF to NHF as recognition of completing 100,000 heart screenings. It was a great honour to receive this high level recognition.
Dr.Regmi also handed over a token of love to ELF on behalf of NHF for partnering with NHF in serving the underserved people of Nepal. The token of love was received by Amanda Fowler.
Following the exchange of the token of love Dr Regmi presented two videos (one about the partnership between NHF and ELF and the other about NHF). Dr Regmi then presented few slides on the activities of NHF. The presentation was followed by discussions, questions and answers. The ASC team listened to the presentations with great interest. During discussion most of the participants expressed their great interest in the methodology and technics of the heart screening that NHF team has been using. There were questions on how the positive cases were taken care, their medical management and follow up care. All the participants were highly satisfied and impressed by the works that NHF has been doing in partnership with the ELF. One of the participants mentioned that the EHM impact reports sent by NHF ware evaluated as one of the best among all partners. Amanda mentioned about the Pro Bono Corps Project which is planned to take place in Nepal in November of this year. This project will be a high level work of our partnership for enhancing the capacity of NHF for serving the underserved. The meeting concluded with a photo session.
Dr Regmi was then invited for lunch with the ASC team.
After the lunch Amanda and Stefaan accompanied Dr Regmi in a tour to the heart valve manufacturing complex and the heart valve museum. The heart valve museum exhibited the history of Edwards and Dr Star, their first heart valve manufacturing machine, the first models of the prosthetic heart valves and the research lab.
The Edwards heart valve campus was a huge complex with 7000 employees. It was amazing to see how 300 women worked together in one shift of 8 hours duration, stitching a biological heart valve by hand under a huge microscope. They worked in three shifts daily. It seems that the valve is made from cow’s pericardium (imported mostly from Denmark), stitched by a woman. One woman completes stitching of one valve in one shift. Each valve has anidentification code which can identify the maker. After the valve implantation was done into a human heart the patient can identify the women maker of the valve if he/she was interested. This was a quite emotional and interesting moment. ELF spends one billion USD in R &D per year. The heart valves that ELF manufactures are of the best standard worldwide. The best part is that ELF is one of the largest organisations worldwide which is involved in charity and provides funding for humanitarian cause saving lives of millions of people globally. NHF is proud to be a partner of ELF in this humanitarian work.
Outcomes of the visit
- The ASC team of ELF was richly briefed and they got to know in person about the important works that NHF has been doing, especially in serving the underserved people.
- The relationship between the two organizations (NHF and ELF) was strengthened and developed into a newer height.
- The visit was highly successful inbuilding trust in each other which has led to an environment of continuation of the partnership between the two organisations in coming years.
