Video Transcription
Adrienn Nemeth 00:02
Hey everyone. First of all, thank you to the LSI organizers for accepting our presentation. I'm Adrienn Németh, Chief Commercial Officer at Vartid, and here I am to introduce you to Bard surgical augmented reality solution. First of all, our company is based in Budapest, Hungary, and we've built an amazing team so far with programmers, engineers, and medical experts. We are in a strategic partnership with Samuel West University, and they help us with the design and testing of this solution. We are privately funded, and so far we have raised about 4.5 million US dollars until we finalize the product.
So why us and why are we unique? There are several solutions on the orthopedic market in computer-assisted solutions for joint replacement surgeries, and they all address the major issue, which is alignment accuracy. Well, we kind of did the same, but we eliminated the markers from the process, which is a major step because it will make the whole surgery much faster, less invasive, and less complicated for both the surgeons and the patients, therefore providing a greater sense of security.
And how we do this is there is a pre-operative planning phase, which is a few minutes based on the patient's clinical data and image data, so the surgeon will have a complete plan in advance, and they will see the outcome of the surgery in advance. They will also receive a list of components with the right sizes based on the parameters of the patient. Then the next step is that this plan is transferred to the augmented reality glasses. At the moment, we use the Magic Leap augmented reality glasses, and all the steps are projected one by one onto the anatomical body with sub-millimeter precision. So the surgeon's hand is kind of guided through this process. Everything is documented along with the pre-plan, and the video is being recorded through the augmented reality glasses. Therefore, it also removes the fatigue of the surgeon while doing the surgery and doing four or five surgeries a day.
So far in the United States, 30 to 40% of the patients have access to computer-assisted solutions, and this is mainly due to price reasons. The price of these computer-assisted solutions has really outweighed the benefits that they bring to the table. And actually, globally, this number is even worse. It's just 15%, which is a very low market penetration, considering that it has been over 15 years since these technologies emerged. This is what we would like to change, and we would like to redefine the standard of care globally. Therefore, we would like to provide accessible and affordable solutions to everyone, so not only patients and hospitals with high financial backgrounds would be able to afford this. There is a very low fee for the hardware and installation and an average cost of $400 per case.
Just a few words about the milestones we have just reached: the sub-millimeter precision, which we are going to test further, and the core of our studies will start in about three to six months. Since we have this 3D localization and recognition ability, this technology can be adapted to various types of surgeries, like, for example, the easiest is other orthopedic surgeries, such as hip replacement, ankle replacement, and shoulder replacement, but it could also be adapted to dental surgeries and neurosurgeries. Of course, our ultimate goal or dream would be to adapt it to robotic solutions, where the robot could work autonomously and could do the cuttings by itself, without the intervention of the surgeon.
Adrienn Nemeth 04:38
So as a final slide, I would like to summarize what we bring to the table: it's not just the technology, but the cost efficiency of the system. First of all, it provides an efficient pre-operative plan and markerless navigation to the patient and the surgeon. It is implant agnostic, so the surgeon is free to choose the best implant that fits the patient's parameters, and it also carries various benefits to hospitals and ASCs because it's affordable, there aren't any disposables, and the system is fully sustainable. It will result in a shorter surgery time and much less implant waste than was needed before, which comes with a better patient experience, of course. Since the system is easy to integrate into the workflow, easy to use, and easy to learn, it will be much easier for ASCs to integrate it.
So thank you for your attention, and if you have any questions, we are available.
