Matt Ginn, IQ Endoscopes - Sustainable Endoscopy Technologies | LSI USA '24

Matt Ginn  0:00  
Good morning, everyone. Hope you Well my name is Matt Ginn and the CEO of IQ Endoscopes. We're based in Wales in the UK. So I'm going to talk today about our company which is really dedicated to solving the problem that we see in flexible endoscopy. And that's the capacity challenge whereby flexible endoscopy is a procedure that is used to detect cancer or diseases such as cancers at an early stage. So by 2027, we'll see 140 million flexible endoscopy procedures carried out worldwide. That's a doubling of the of the demand since 2020. And that's happening three major reasons. Number one, we're all living longer. So we're picking up early symptoms that need to be diagnosed and investigated. Number two, there's increased prophylactic screening programs across most major countries, which is increasing the demand for the procedure. And there's also a preference now for endoscopic based procedures as opposed to surgical procedures. So that is causing a big strain on the facilities on the ecosystem that delivers that endoscopy procedure to diagnose these cancers and demand will outgrow supply. Just to let you know, in the UK, there is half a million patients on a backlog waiting list for flexible endoscope. So why is this problem happening? 99% of the technology that's used at the minute to carry out a flexible endoscopy is reusable by its nature. It's a very expensive capital equipment, which comes with service and maintenance contracts. So if you as a health provider want to carry out more endoscopies, you need more equipment. And we all know what's happening to capital budgets around the world. Also, the device is reusable. So once it's been used, it gets sent off to decontamination, which is a complex process, which takes over an hour might be on site might not be on site. And that scope has to come back into circulation in time for that procedure for the next patient. So we're not saying that reuse single use will replace reusable. What we're saying is that reusable cannot cope with the capacity demands that health systems need to carry out endoscopies. And single use has been around for a while the theory of single use. But since COVID-19, we've really seen a boom in its adoption. One of the biggest players in the market Ambu was selling 300,000 units before COVID after COVID. Now they're selling 2.3 million a year, but in more simple procedures such as bronchoscopy, Cystoscopy and duodenal Skippy, and it's been proven that single use will increase the capacity and throughput of patients so we can treat more patients. It will lower the cost of endoscopy by bringing an operating expense, as opposed to a capital item, and it will diversify the point of treatment for those patients. But until now, with the largest market of Gi gastrointestinal, nobody has been able to develop a scope that replicates the performance of a reusable device, but using sustainable, environmentally friendly technologies at an affordable price. And that's what we've been doing at IQ Endoscopes. So we have a patented gi platform, which combines a reusable base unit with a range of single use scopes, which replicate the handling of a reusable device. But through single these materials. Everything we do is environmentally sustainable and designed for recyclability. Our device has been designed by clinicians, for clinicians, it looks like works like feels like a reusable, so there is no retraining required for the doctor. We have a base unit, which is modular and it's designed, you can put all the expensive components into that base unit. And then everything from the scope from its quick connector through to the distal tip is single use. The secret sauce is the handling of that handpiece. Whether you have our gastro scope, our Sigmoidal scope or our Kelowna scope, it will look and feel the same and give you that same performance every single time. We're pleased to announce that our first diagnostic gastro scope has received FDA clearance and UK ca clearance. And that's a great way for us to now launch our go to market products into both the UK and the US. So we took that prototype, and then we designed it redesigned it slightly for high volume manufacture at a low cost of goods. From that gastro scope, we developed a colonoscope. And we've also got a sigmoid scope. So we have the largest range of single use endoscopes to address the biggest addressable market in the world. They all connect back to the same base unit, they all have the same look and feel which is really important for endoscopy in not returning back doctor. All of our devices are affordable. They're familiar. They give efficiency and workflows. They're sustainable, and they are specifically designed for high volume manufacture. But entering the market for us is just the beginning. We're leveraging that technology to put more technology on board. We want to provide prevent commoditization in this space. So we have got improved optical solutions. We've got scope positioning systems, and we're able to do rapid range extensions because of the modular platform that we've created. And everything we do is designed around sustainability, so not one of our scopes will be thrown away. Put into infected waste. Our IP is pretty watertight at the minute but we focused on protecting ergonomic performance. So the way that we've redesigned that scope to look and feel like a reusable and now what we're doing is working really hard to get some more IP specifically designed around sustainability and create a blue ocean net for ourselves. You hear many companies coming into the visualisation space, and there are lots of companies who provide a range, but in praat in procedures such as duodenal, Skippy, bronchoscopy and cystoscopy, those procedure numbers are a lot lower, and they're becoming very crowded. But if you look at the orange bubble there, there's Ambu. And there's IQ Endoscopes, and we are looking to be the first company in there with the fullest range of endoscopes to tackle out gastroscopy colonoscopy and sigmoidoscopy to help prevent to help treat patients better. For an early diagnosis. The procedure numbers are high, and the average selling price is attractive, which gives us decent margins for our business. So we've been at this since 2020, only three years, we're a company of 25 people, we've raised about $15 million to date. And we've got our first approvals, and we're now looking to scale to commercialization. So with another 8 million of which 6 million we have secured, we're looking to get to commercialization in the UK by the beginning of next year. We're also looking to see the market over here, can we find a couple of centers that will deploy the scopes to get our post mask, post market clinical data to scale the operation and essentially bring bring IQ Endoscopes into the states? We're exceptionally passionate about what we do. We have a technology that can treat 100 million patients from the word go. And as you can see in the single use market, there is many many opportunities. Thank you very much.