Video Transcription
Pierre Lemire 00:02
I've been building products since 1986, and I've been really fortunate that all of the products that I've worked on have involved imaging. The great thing about imaging is you see very interesting outputs right from the very beginning, and seeing is really important, especially when you try and understand what's happening in tissue. So the current product that Kent Imaging is developing right now is this device. It's called Snapshot NAR. It's a handheld device. I'll tell you more about it in a second, but it allows clinicians to understand what's happening in tissue, in wounds, in surgeries, because that's critical. When you look at the staggering rates of what's happening with amputations, the number of amputations that exist right now is a staggering amount. It's way higher than it needs to be, and we can do way better. Our technology is based on light. So where ultrasound uses ultrasound imaging, and X-rays use X-rays, we use near-infrared light, and we apply it in three different applications, which you'll hear about—very novel applications. And you can see what we do is, when the camera takes a picture, these LEDs at the front shine at different wavelengths, and we capture the images back from those different wavelengths. From that, we can unmix a signal and create images like you see here that provide different levels of information for clinicians depending on the practice. So Snapshot NAR, clearly produced and sold in the US, Canada, Australia, and Israel, uses near-infrared light to look at oxygen that's in your tissue because hemoglobin, if it has oxygen bound to it, will reflect near-infrared light differently than if it doesn't have it bound. And by those characteristics, we can create images that, like you see in the top, can help the clinician understand what's happening. And so in this case, the clinician is trying to understand, is there a vascular problem here? Do we need to refer this patient to a vascular lab to have a procedure to unclog their vessels, or do they have enough oxygen for that tissue to heal? One of the main problems with wounds not healing is that they don't have enough oxygen. As I said, this product is currently FDA cleared. We're selling it in the US. We're working on our CE marking; our stage one audit is already set for January of next year, so we will have clearance for this product in Europe, which will extend our addressable market. The second product in our portfolio is called Snapshot Glow. This uses a different way of light being reflected. In this case, we look at how bacteria fluoresces light and how much light it actually fluoresces. Based on that characteristic, we can create a different image, which shows the clinicians how much bacteria there is in the wound, if there's bacteria presence or not, and the type of bacteria, whether it's gram-positive, gram-negative, or biofilm developing. It's those critical aspects that are required for a clinician to understand how they should treat the wound. And I'm really excited to announce that last week, we submitted this product, this new product, to the FDA, and we expect clearance in early next year. The third portfolio product is called Flow, and again, it's using near-infrared light. But in this particular case, we're looking at a dye that's been injected into a patient called ICG (indocyanine green). When you put near-infrared light on ICG, it reflects back at a different wavelength, and we can capture that and create imaging to show the patient and the clinician that there's flow through the body. So the combination of our products shows flow, shows the presence of oxygen, which may not be present even if you have flow, and bacteria. So kind of all multiple critical items to identify, all using near-infrared light. This product already has a category one code in the US, so we're just completing the development of that, and we'll be launching it in 2026. When you bring this all together, you have an immense wealth of data in one repository that we call Vault. So bringing the oxygenation data, the bacteria data, and the flow data, we have the ability to create an unbelievable wealth of data that we're feeding into AI algorithms to improve the way that clinicians treat patients. And what we really like is we have multiple applications that feed multiple call points: the hospital alone, within the surgical suite, the wound care suite, the hyperbaric center, on the ward—all points of care, these can is where the technology can be applied, and also outside the hospital, in the clinic, even at home, we're seeing strong clinical value with the technology. Here's an example at Mercy Healthcare, where they looked at how their results were in terms of healing rates and amputation rates prior to the use of our technology and after the use of our technology. You can see their healing rates went from 52% up to 72%, and their amputation rates dropped from 12% down to 7.6%. Very, very important—the patient outcomes are way better, with fewer people getting their legs amputated, and in terms of cost to the health system, they drove those health system costs down. That's not the only site; Wound Care Plus has also seen significant value in using our technology. Again, the key things they're seeing are the ability to do a fast referral so that a patient doesn't go on losing not having oxygen, the proper amount of oxygen in their tissue to heal. The sooner that we can get that addressed, the faster their wounds will heal. And the same with the ability to debride and get rid of that bacteria that's in the wound; we can do that quickly and effectively, which significantly improves outcomes. From this slide is a lot of really important data from Martha Kelsall Group, but what's key is, with our technology, they were able to identify patients who they thought would no longer have value from care. They were called palliative, and by using our technology, they realized they actually could treat those wounds, and they went on to treat and heal those wounds for those patients. Really, really important. There's a lot of different technology that tries to do what we're doing: T-coms, ABIs, thermography, but they're all surpassing in terms of addressable market. Obviously, with these multiple product lines and a global problem, this is a huge, huge market, but for us, we're really looking at what's a serviceable serviceable market, and that's where we have regulatory clearance: the US, Canada, Australia, adding Europe next year. That's going to really improve our potential for revenue with our sales strategy. We're a very aggressive pricing model. We sell it on a capital purchase, but we also sell it on a subscription basis. That allows people to get into this technology and get really hooked on it as we move forward and penetrate the market. In terms of where we are today, we're raising another round. We're looking for a $15 million investment to complement TVM's $7 million. Our use of funds primarily is to buy more capital. We have over 500 devices that we need to build for next year based on our current runway. We need to continue our clinical randomized clinical trials, which are critical for our category one code, which will be coming into play next year, and those trials are already in progress. And then we really want to aggressively launch these new products: the Snapshot Glow, which we have FDA clearance for early next year, and the Flow coming in after that. We're laser-focused on making sure that the company is prepped for an exit in 2026. This will be our last round of funding, and so we're working on making sure we have a very clear sales model, that the marketing material and the education material we have is crystal clear on how clinicians can really take advantage of the technology. And we're making a significant investment in the patent portfolio to ensure that this very strong technology is well protected. So we're really excited about where we're at. I love the fact that we're able to play with great technology like this that has real, real value, and we have lots of innovations that we continue to move forward with. So hopefully, if you have time to meet with me this week and want to learn more about what we're doing, I'm happy to meet and talk a little more about it. Thanks very much for your time. Applause.
