Ward Detwiler, SpinTech MRI - Addressing Challenges to MRI | LSI Europe '22

Transcription

Ward Detwiler  0:05  

Well, thank you everyone. My name is Ward Detwiler, I'm the co founder and Chief Commercial Officer of SpinTech MRI. We are a medical imaging software company that is trying to address some of the key challenges facing radiologists, neurologists and neurosurgeons by really changing what's possible with magnetic resonance imaging. Now, MRI is an incredibly powerful technology capable of providing just exquisite visualization of key brain structures, and generating quantitative information that can be used to discover new biomarkers guide treatment decisions ultimately improve patient care. But the true power of this technology has been constrained by a host of real world both clinical and operational challenges. Imaging groups are faced with decreasing reimbursement, increasing patient demand, and strained workflows that are causing them to find ways constantly to try to reduce Scan times. All the while we see the complexity of these diseases increasing, which was requiring more and more higher quality data to properly diagnose and treat. But what this means is that radiologists and imaging groups have to make trade offs between speed and diagnostic quality, and ultimately, that can have disastrous consequences for patients and providers alike. Now, this isn't just our opinion, but this is echoed by nearly every physician that we talk with, including Dr. Miriam aboyne, at Yale University, where we're doing a validation study to really quantify what the impact of our solution is on these challenges. And I just show this because this is taken from a talk that she gave earlier this spring, really calling out for the need for new technologies to address some of these critical challenges. Now, if we look at what this means, in terms of patients, the impact is just absolutely huge. Over 100 million patients a year suffer from these conditions around the globe. And if we take just one example and look at Parkinson's disease, this is a very complex condition has many different subtypes, many different treatment options, and it really relies on accurate quantitative data to make a confident decision and treatment plan. However, conventional diagnosis is performed using untoasted just qualitative metrics, whether it's gait, or movement tests, or looking at imaging data. As a result, it can take over five years, by the time it patient first presents to when they actually get properly diagnosed and treated, all the while that's driving immense costs and robbing years of quality of life and these patients. But what if we could change all that? And what if we could take a single rapid Mr scan that would generate all the data you needed to make an accurate decision right from day one. And that's exactly what we're doing with our stage MRI software platform stage generates comprehensive quantitative MRI brain imaging data in a single five minute scan, all in existing equipment. No matter the manufacturer, no matter the field strength. What this means for radiologists is that they no longer have to worry about what images they're going to collect just what images they're going to look at, because all of that data has already been acquired. Now for imaging groups, the impact is huge because a 40% reduction in brain imaging protocol times has a huge impact on the reimbursement revenue, we estimate that we can drive 500,000 to a million dollars of new reimbursement revenue each year per machine, all from a simple software add on. But on top of that, we see a additional benefits across the kind of healthcare continuum as well. For radiologists themselves, this enhanced visualization helps drive faster, more confident reads. For neurologists, this quantitative information can help highlight new biomarkers, and drive better and earlier treatment decisions. And for neurosurgeons, we're able to visualize parts of the brain that could never really see before some of these key targets for things like deep brain stimulation, to have better surgical planning and ultimately better patient outcomes. And perhaps most importantly, is that none of this relies on sub sampling data or using AI like some of our competitors might do this is all based in the physics of MR. So that means that what you see is what's actually there, so you can make confident, reliable decisions. Now stage also standardizes data across MRI platforms. And that may sound a little technical, but this is a huge decade's long problem. And then NMR because your brain doesn't look the same when you could scan machine to machine. So we solve that. And that has a huge impact on workflow and efficiency because as a provider, you no longer have to worry about where your patient was scanned. When you do a follow up scan that brains don't look the same every single time. Perhaps most exciting is how we're applying machine learning analysis to this multi contrast quantitative data for the discovery of new biomarkers for complex conditions. And if we take a look at what we're doing in Parkinson's right now, through our massive global research collaborations, we've been able to develop an automated report that interprets this data to help identify Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease earlier on, be able to better characterize and classify that disease and provide improved tracking over time ultimately, hopefully getting to that key decision and that better treatment plan earlier on and saving quality of life for this patient. And this can be applied across a whole range of neurological conditions. Now driving all this forward is an incredibly experienced team led by our founder and chief science officer, Dr. Mark Heiki, who's really one of the most prolific in this field globally. Our president CEO Karen Holtzburger has over 20 years of experience in the radiology software field, previously leading nuances $200 million radiology business before there's almost $20 billion exit to Microsoft off last year, CFO Jashah has over 30 years of leading early stage companies through financing and exit transactions. And I've spent nearly my whole career commercializing early stage technologies in the healthcare field. On top of that, we have an incredible foundation in research and technology with over 100 published papers using these technologies. We have a very broad patent portfolio, and we have a track record of success of successfully bringing things through the regulatory process. Now, we're bringing a very strong compelling value proposition solving a key clinical challenge into a massive and growing market. Our first market horizon is really focused on addressing us based providers through direct sales on a subscription basis, the lessons circumvent that traditionally long capital budgeting cycle to hopefully drive faster adoption. Beyond that, we're gonna be looking to expand into the EU into China later next year. And that brings our total serviceable addressable market to over $740 million dollars. From there. Once we have those landing points across these markets. We have expansion opportunities within that as we roll out our future diagnostics, like our Parkinson's report, like our micro bleed tool, like some of the things we're working on an MS that's really going to let us further grow revenue within those sites. But as we look across the healthcare continuum, we see a tremendous number of points for value creation and natural partnerships with pharma companies with device companies, with other diagnostics and with payers alike. So we really kicked off our commercialization in earnest at the beginning of this year, following our FDA approval at the end of last year, we've really been focused on dealing with really keep leading neurology and neuro imaging sites, helping to validate our value proposition. As a result, we have our first few paying customers already a growing pipeline of late stage deals, and really count some of these top institutions is really our biggest advocates and early adopters that are helping to expand that message and drive our adoption through the wider market. We're also partnering and have close relationships with some of the top manufacturers and also other diagnostic software companies, which will help us open up new sales channels and move beyond direct sales as we move into the future to help accelerate our growth. So doing all of this obviously requires capital, we've been pretty lucky early on, we've had over $6 million of non dilutive funding, and a four and a half million dollar seed round that let us really validate this technology, build out the platform for market readiness and get some of those early products through the FDA. We are just completing our Series A at this point, we've raised $6 million into that so far, that's been invested in the bank for looking for about another million to a million and a half dollars to close through the end of this year. That's gonna let us expand our sales team really ramp up some of our marketing efforts, prepare those next two diagnostic tools for regulatory submission, and lay the foundation for that international expansion into next year. And I think that the proceeds from this round will really help us hit some key inflection points, that'll put us in a really nice position to raise about a 10 to $15 million Series B that we're looking for probably at the start of 2024. So with that, I'd just like to thank you all for your time. I'll be around the conference. If you guys have questions. I hope to talk to many of you or my contact information is up on the screen right there that I hope I wasn't standing in front of the whole time. So thank you all very much.