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Oliver Baertl presented CorTec GmbH at LSI USA ‘24

CorTec is developing the next generation of active implants for neuromodulation.
Speakers
Oliver Baertl
Oliver Baertl
CorTec GmbH

Oliver Baertl  0:04  
My name is Oliver, I am the CEO at CorTec. And at CorTec, we produce a brain computer interface. So and I'm gonna, I'm gonna lead you through what the product looks like and what we are about to do with it. CorTec is in the midst of, let's say, an interesting area, with the neural link stuff going on. So there's a lot of hype on BCIs. And there is a large market need there for treating neurological disorders. And we are in the midst of this. And in addition to that, the neurological diseases like Parkinson's stroke, they are really, really impacting the society at a cost of 800 billion worldwide. That dwarfs the cost for heart disease, that's 200 billion worldwide. And so when we set out we we, we did realize that it is not possible to conduct appropriate research. And then there's the lack of a device. So with rich, you can read from the brain and stimulate back to the brain. And so that's what we set out to develop as a platform technology. Our device, in simple terms, is, is able to read, send signals outside of the brain, then process it and send a signal back to the brain. So that's the stimulation signal. And in order to do so, we have a couple of components that go with a system, you have, we have electrodes, and that sends and modulate the brain. We have implanted electronics, that, that amplify and digitize the data. And we have a headpiece that provides power. So it's basically the system is not battery driven. So if you remove the power supply, the system will not work. And then we have a communication unit, that's the via less transmission between the implant and that computer, so to say, and then we have a portable computer, that's the brain of the system. There they are, the algorithms can be run and t, it does the calculations for the system. And then we have the ability to store data in the cloud for remote access. We had to build all the all the components from scratch. So we we did our electrodes ourselves, we have implantable electronics that we had to design the chip, the chip for reading and in stimulating then we have to kind of get this whole thing watertight. And encapsulation technology developed. And so we ended up with a couple of patents around all of this and 24 To be precise patent families Yeah, in all major areas of the world. And then we have external components that are used to for for the computational aspects of it. How is the business model rocking, we have basically three areas that we are that we are active in, we are in therapy development. B So we have a couple of a couple of research agreements with a key key opinion leaders and they want to use our device to drive the knowledge generation in the in their field. And that's I think a good deal because we provide the hardware and they provide to know how on the indication. Then we have a good components business up quick components business where we help other companies to work with the components that we help them to design and then we have to threat string of business and that's the most important one. That's why I'm here today. I'm the big four stroke rehabilitation so we want to use our plan form for a first indication to prove that the platform is able to do what we are claiming that it can do. And we know that this is possible, but we still lack the first inhuman now. So that's the next big milestone that we can get the first inhuman, and we decided that we're gonna do this with a stroke rehabilitation. So why stroke rehabilitation first. If you if you survive the stroke, then 50% of people remain disabled permanently. And so nowadays, the approach that we are looking out for is basically to combine physical therapy with conventional with a lot of stimulation. And we have, the market is huge. We have the technology and most importantly, we have, we have a doctor that is willing to test this approach that if you face them, then the outcomes of plasticity in the brain will be better. We have a strong team. Martin is the brains behind that technology. Then we have Professor Tim Dennison. He's really well connected in the in the area of modulation, neural modulation. And then we are working with a professor with Seema and from the University of Tuebingen. That's also one of our advisors. And yeah. And in summary, so what what do you take away from from my conversation? It's, we have a highly advanced system that is able to read from the brain and right back to the brain. So it's closed loop. And the that enables a specific, targeted approach that depends on the brain state. And we have a high market potential that we have, I think, between US and Europe as 2 million in stroke, incidences, yeah. And so the market is really, really big. And we have a highly experienced management team. And so that was it. Thank you very much.


 

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