Just catching up on the excellent EMvision meeting presentation. I think they have a very exciting product brewing here which, if it goes as planned, could be a genuine game changer and solve a multitude of problems as outlined in the preso. Through the work i do, and have done in past, I can relate to all the short comings of the current patient diagnostic and transport/logistical pathway. Say for instance, a patient has stroke symptoms at a small peripheral hospital. They would need to be transferred to the larger rural referral hospital for a ct scan. Should the scan show a stroke that meets the criteria for a mechanical thrombectomy (a neurointerventionalist goes in through the blood vessels in the groin with a small catheter, up into the brain and physically removes the clot), they'd then be transported by road or air to the nearest centre with this service for this procedure. This is all performed in a time-sensitive manner and at all times of the day with the goal of improving blood flow to the effected part of the brain in the shortest time possible. So you could see that the patient would skip one step in the process with EMV's scanner by getting scanned at the first hospital they present to, skip the second, and going straight to the third for treatment. This has a number of implications including improved time to treatment but also reduced burden on the already stretched patient retrieval network which is very complex and very costly. Efficiency and cost is everything in the public health system, given that most struggle with both. If you can improve both of these things you may stand a chance of getting your product into it.
Another tail wind for this product is that stroke treatment and management has been a very active area of research for the last 10 or so years, and there have been a lot of positive results and hence medical progress. For instance, The current literature shows benefit for thrombectomy from 0-24 hours from the last time the patient was seen to be well. The landmark trials for this are only 5-7 years old, which is not long in medical terms (here is one for those interested: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa1706442). I'm also led to believe that there are current trials looking at extending that out to 36 hours (although I haven't seen them myself). This would significantly increase the demand for such services and hence the efficiency of the entire system would be even more critical. This is a growing area.
Lastly, a clear, broader trend of med tech is point of care diagnostics and/or treatment. As technology improves, things get smaller, more portable and often cheaper and quicker. Both generally as well as in medical technology. There are many examples where bedside testing has changed practice significantly. Point of care ultrasound is a very good example which is almost ubiquitous in this country now. The tests that UBI have and are working on are another. So EMV's product could perhaps be the next generation of this trend in stroke diagnostics.
Anyway, just my 2 cents on some potential practical implication of this technology.
I don't hold any shares in this company but i will be watching on with interest.
Edit: third paragraph
A reminder: the EMvision meeting will start at 1pm AEDT today (ie in 5 min)
Head over to the meetings page to tune in, or join direct in Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86473218535?pwd=RkhLa3FlRzh6RmRmUDhRYW9NNEljUT09
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