Chris Murphy, Bluedrop Medical - Thermal & Visual Assessment of Diabetic Foot Ulcers | LSI USA '24

Chris Murphy  0:04  
My name is Chris Murphy, co founder and CEO of Blue Rock medical. We're on a mission to end unnecessary diabetic amputation. We're raising a $20 million, Series B, we have 50% already committed from our existing investors. So this is a huge problem that we're solving diabetic foot ulcers was 1.7 million ulcers leading to 100,000, amputations and $17 billion in costs each year in the US. The solution Despite this, the scale of problems is actually very simple, you need to just check your feet daily, visually and thermally. These simple steps have been shown to prevent over 70% of foot ulcers yet they're currently just too difficult to use for the for the patient population who can be elderly, obese mobility issues. The current solutions lack key functionality and are disjointed and effectively are not making the impact on the current state of the of the of the flow for diabetic foot ulcers. So we solve these problems, we combine thermal and visual monitoring in a simple, easy to use device it takes 30 seconds to use per day, we include remote patient monitoring around this technology. And if we can solve the problem, the market is absolutely huge $4 billion in the US alone. So diabetic foot ulcers, the reason they occur is because of peripheral neuropathy. So people with diabetes develop nerve damage in their feet. So this means they don't realize when they stand on. They have a stone in their shoe when they have shoes that are too tight, it's very minor skin damage goes unnoticed and eventually develops into something like a foot ulcer that can ultimately lead to an amputation. And about 25% of all people with diabetes will develop a foot ulcer at some point in their life. And really, once you develop your first ulcer, you're on a downward spiral, you're gonna get a second ulcer 40% will develop a second ulcer within 12 months, by five years, almost all of these patients will have developed at least one subsequent ulcer. The really shocking stat though, is that 15% of these ulcers lead to amputation. And even after amputation, the five year mortality rate is incredibly high 46%. That's higher than almost all forms of cancer. So as I said, we know, we actually know how to prevent all of these ulcers, it's incredibly easy, you just need to visually inspect your feet. The reason you do this, because if you can't feed your feet, you don't realize when this damage is occurring. So you need to check once a day, at least for visual signs of skin damage. temperature monitoring has been proposed as a really incredible way to predict these ulcers in clinical trials, they've been shown, it's been shown to prevent 70% of foot ulcers. But the challenge is that they these techniques are just too difficult to use for this patient patient population. They're elderly, they have poor vision, poor mobility. And it's really impossible to actually view the soles of the foot for a patient from one of these categories. In total, they take about 10 minutes to use per day, which is again, just too challenging. Competitors have taken this technique really looking at temperature monitoring, made that a lot easier to use take taking it from 10 minutes down to about 30 seconds. But they still haven't they still the problem still exists with visual monitoring. So the patient is still required to visually inspect their feet every day. And this means that the true promise of temperature monitoring hasn't been achieved, the patient still has to check their feet if a hotspot is identified. So even though there's solutions out there, they haven't made an impact on this problem. Neither of these methods will work alone temperature monitoring visual needs to be combined into one system. And that's exactly what we've done with our device. So the device, as you can see looks very similar to standard home weighing scales, the patient uses it once a day. And in a 32nd scan, we take visual images of the feet as well as temperature data. The despite looking quite simple. There's a incredible amount of sensor technology built into this device for which we have two patent filings. device sends the data to the cloud where it's reviewed remotely by our in house clinical monitoring team. And if we identify an issue, we'll reach out to the patient with simple, easy to follow steps about how they can prevent that ulcer from forming. In more severe cases, we'll also reach out to the healthcare provider to schedule in person or emergency care. We have some really good good data. So just last year, we finished a clinical study. And really we were kind of blown away by some of the results we've seen particularly in patient compliance. So 91% of patients were fully compliant to the recommended use of our system, which we think is just incredible. But the value of visual imaging was really borne out in this these results as well. So clinicians stated that the visual aspect of what we do is valuable in over 90% of flagged reports. You can see here some examples of the images that we collect from the emergency situation a bloody bandage. So this means the patient needs to go into to get emergency care. This is a very serious situation, more routine care, such as the callus in the middle, or even simple things like coin or dirt on the soles of the feet could lead to ulcers, if not caught early, and we can coach a patient remotely about how to prevent that. What's striking about these three examples is that all of these were identified with visual imaging before the temperature side, again, really highlighting the need for the combined approach of terminal and visual. So the market, there's 30 million people with diabetes in the US, we don't target all of them, we focus on a very narrow, 2 million patient subsection, these are the patients who have already had a foot ulcer in the past, we help prevent that second ulcer from from forming. The reason why we target these is partly because there's a highest risk but also because they're the most motivated, they never want to have another ulcer again, they don't want to go through that process. To to as a payer, we are to to pay for this, we target the payers to health insurers and the service providers, really leveraging the fact that we can save them about $1,000 net, per patient per year on average, and a 3x or y really within a couple of months. We charge a $200 per member per month fee, which includes the device the monitoring, and the onboarding, any set up and ongoing tech support and again, the market really huge $4 billion per year in the US. We have an outstanding team at Blue Drop. So the company was founded by myself and Simon Keirsey. We come from a background in medical device product development. We worked previously in Medtronic in research and development there. Chris Andrew C leads up our US side of the business. He's our Chief Commercial Officer. He's based in Houston, Texas. He comes from a background in wound care again, companies like KCI, Saturday and three, a lot of experience in digital health remote patient monitoring there. Our Medical Director, Dr. Scott has a 30 year track record as a as a physician treating wounds and set up some of the first wound care centers in Texas during his career. Our go to market strategy. So we are FDA, fully FDA compliant, HIPAA compliant, as of 2023. We have two active commercial pilots, including one in LA with the health system with the highest amputation rate in the country. We have a further pilots planned for later in the year, and you know, really starting to sort of seeds for, you know, for growth into the future. We also have an active clinical trial with Duke which we commenced in January. So as I said, product volumes complete, regulatory complete, we're raising this 20 million, Series B. So really fun to growth and to kind of to go after this market. The goal is to grow to 9000 users and $20 million ARR by the end of 2026. And really build out the commercial, the manufacturing and monitoring operations to get us there. So thanks for listening, really appreciate it. We're really welcome any conversations about what we're doing happy to hear from anyone who shares our vision of a world without diabetic amputation. Thank you