Nicolas Gausserand, Medinbox - Spotlight Interview | LSI USA ‘23

Transcription

Nick Talamantes  

Hi Nicolas, welcome to LSI. Tell me a little bit about Medinbox.

Nicolas Gausserand  

So thank you very much to welcome me. So Medinbox, we are talking about medical collaboration. And at the beginning, we started in medical education, we coming from education, and education in surgery and medical practice is all about observation and being observed by peers by experts. And we have created a tool to sell medical education with high quality expectation for large conferences, congresses. And then we moved to the oversight of the proctoring. And, and, and support by enabling medical teams to use the same tools, the same quality to be to send their images to peers, to give guidance, or advice during procedures.

Nick Talamantes  

So it's my understanding you guys were founded in 2010. And you're now in 300 different sites, is that correct?

Nicolas Gausserand  

Yes, that's a that's correct. So we started the company in 2010, I was running a business in, in audio visual, video production of medical content, educational content. And I sit with public hospital in a Surina private hospital in in France green pasture, which is one of the most important in interventional cardiology. And in the world of casual jeans, in general, it's where the Pioneer started the technique in the in the 70s. And on the production side, we had expectations in terms of quality in terms of production. And clinic pastor was looking for tool to serve the doctors to be easy to use, with a limited footprint. And we decided to go together and create something at the beginning, it was first only for clinic pastor and my audiovisual company, and then we have started naturally to, to expand the footprint. And we went over centers in in Europe, than in Middle East in us. And and now in also in, in, in Asia Pacific with centers in Japan and, and Australia.

Nick Talamantes  

That's impressive. So Nicolas, tell me a little bit about the product, what does it look like when it's set up? What does what can a doctor expect to be using once you have it installed and set up.

Nicolas Gausserand  

So the product is, is blend of hardware and software. We are not hardware company, we are more software company. But we we we want to keep the hand on the on the hardware, it's very important to be sure that where your software will be installed, the hardware will be powerful enough will be with the quality of the camera will be good enough to produce the best content. So we have on the one side a cart we have books, we have a portable system. So we are covering all all different aspects. And then we have the software we have multiple approach approaches sorry. One is to improvise. So that means the medical team can decide to disconnect the internet and record the case locally or transmitted case, internally in the in the hospital. So this is very important. And this is a huge difference with all the new players entering the business. Because it's a very it's in your DNA to be able to disconnect everything. And which is really important sometimes for privacy, or some hospitals, maybe don't want to do anything. Then we we have the connecting features in boxes coming at the beginning for medical education. So we used to connect to satellite prediction. At the beginning we were in 2010 the network connections were not good enough to broadcast as today with with the internet capacities. So we have the possibility to broadcast to almost everything we could be satellite since we are not using it anymore, but it used to be used. But you can use any platform. It could be zoom teams, or any professional platform used by the hospital or a user And then we have our main buckling platform, which is how our own cloud system. But with the same parodying, I mean, all the production is done on premise. So you are not sending everything to the cloud, to be processed to be anonymized everything, all the anonymization. And all the process is done locally at the hospital. So we assure that we don't have any leaks of patient data. We we are we keep also behind of the on the quality, when you are recording a case you are recording the case, luckily, you will not depending on on the on the transmission. And of course, we have a synchronization between what is local, and what is online. But this is these questions will be answered by the user or by the center.

Nick Talamantes  

So, it's my understanding that your technology actually talks to other devices in the operating room. For example, if you have and angiographic catheter, you can visualize it and capture that recording through yours. Is that a unique feature of your technology?

Nicolas Gausserand  

It's a kind of unique feature. Yes, we are, we can integrate a lot of imaging. And we are comfortable, where you have a lot of imaging and in complex environments. And this is coming from the history of the company. I used to work in medical education and I used to work for large conferences in interventional cardiology. And in in this world, you cannot watch procedure without watching the angiography echo the vitals of the patient, you need to see everything at the same time to be able to see the case in the full case. And to have full view, which is which is very important. And you need to have a quality good enough to see what's happening on the NGO, the NGO, it's black and white, and you cannot have pixels like that. Otherwise, you will not be able to see a guide will not be able to see a catheter or device. So we are integrating the maximum medical modalities. And we can integrate everything we are totally agnostic. So we are not depending on specific hardware, we can basically connect to everything which provides an output.

Nick Talamantes  

So it sounds like you're really specialized in the cath lab right now, are there other operating room types that you're really a great fit for with your technology?

Nicolas Gausserand  

So I I felt in the cath lab when I was very young. And I had the chance to work with the pioneer in interventional cardiology and I have in mind Giammarco which is one of the founder of of the technology. And I was I was a young IT guy, I was CTO in the company and I met with that guy and he said you know what I ate it said hello, thank you. And he said to me, but you look like a good man and I will consider to work with you, if you can understand what I do. And I said okay, what do you expect from me. So, you will come you will sit in my control room, you will watch every case and when you will have in mind when you understand what I'm doing we will we will work together. And this was very important because I understood why it is so important to have a good image what is so important to see clearly what's the surgeon is doing with a with his hands. So, this was the very the foundation of of what became my inbox after and there was also a second event and it was in it was in 20 25,005 Something like that. And I was working on a project with it was with Medtronic it was a program on treatment of acute MI and we went to a center in the in Paris to record the case. I was with an Ontario TV crew. So like he said so cameraman, audio engineers, video producer and it's one of the biggest center in in Paris. UK used to have a lot of acute MI during the weekend and our objective was to record everything since the the transfer of the patient and all the procedure and how to treat and how what is the most efficient way to treat this and to produce a documentary for conference. So we set up everything in the lab capture all the medical device, setup the camera, everything and we we spent the weekend waiting patient and no patient on On this specific weekend, and and at that time I was discussing with doctors and indicate the question came from one doctor. And it was, Is it possible to have not so much complicated setup, but something with a smaller footprint, easy to use, where we can just press a button and record the case? And said, Yes, why not?

Nick Talamantes  

Let's focus on that. And that's the birthplace right there. Yes.

Nicolas Gausserand  

And where the ID came from, it was really a need from the medical team to be able to produce something. And with the quality good enough to be used on a large conference. And an after to build database of of cases.

Nick Talamantes  

So tell me a little bit about why your customers choose to work with you,

Nicolas Gausserand  

the customer choosing us, because we are the only ones offering an end to end solution. So we are both hardware we're both software, we have the Cloud Platform. And we are we offer the full integration into a cath lab or an operating room, I mean, the footprint is the smallest, and the quality is the best. So using these brands, this is mostly why they are choosing us.

Nick Talamantes  

And then the customer is able to get a completely customized solution. So if they need multiple ORs set up, or, you know, let's say they need six cameras, this is all configurable on their end, they can just come to you guys, and you guys are completely adaptable to this, it doesn't require a certain amount of hardware.

Nicolas Gausserand  

We have on the shelf offers. And we have custom made offers. So depending on the project, depending on if we are talking to a Senator who is seeking for education only, or one who wants to open his, his room to the outside world for to receive guidance. We can cover almost everything. So from the basic needs to the full, complex ecosystem required by the user.

Nick Talamantes  

Can you talk to me a little bit about what the commercialization process looks like for Medinbox.

Nicolas Gausserand  

So at the beginning, we have created Medinbox to self clinic pastor and my company next media factory. And being in clinic pastor gives us a huge exposure to the world, you have experts from all the world coming to pastor to watch cases. And from there, we are starting to spread the system around. And our sales force is our customers. So we developed all the business during all those years, with customers recommending us to our customers. And now we in the process to to, to develop that and to to keep this Salesforce already in place. And to expand to a more traditional Salesforce to develop the business.

Nick Talamantes  

I'm sure many companies would want to understand how they could do what you guys are doing with just all this inbound business. What is sort of the future of Medinbox look like? Where are you taking the company? Could you give us a little more information about that sort of roadmap for you guys.

Nicolas Gausserand  

This is a very good transition with what I was explaining before about creating a library, case library. Because this is important. So we are now running the company since first in years we have I don't I think it's I don't have the numbers in mind. But I think it's billions of hours of procedures. And now the next step is what we can propose to the medical teams with all the data that they have, because the video means data at the end and when we are watching a medical device when we are watching technique, we have a lot of data. The real question is what can we do with the data and what we can provide to the medical teams to enable them to better take care of the patient to be more efficient, to be able to actually analyze what we are doing every day and be better in the performance etc. So this is one point where we are working we have a lot of options. Now AI becomes pretty crazy. We can do almost everything. We we have a lot of folks very excited in the team we have a GPT which will be very helpful. With doctors it's very easy to train the model and to get ready So very fast. We are also working in VR. At the beginning, we have a lot of questions about about VR, what we can do with VR, what can be interesting what we can provide. And, and we have developed a couple of test programs in VR. And the results are very good. It's very interesting because you can in the neck directional perspective, you can be immersed in the in the in the lab on VR. And as a second operator, it will be indirect, will you have direct view on the table, you'll have a daily view on the medical equipment around you. And mixing VR technologies plus made in box technology, we can add the view of the VR camera and the view of the medical imaging, taking care of all the anonymization of the confidentiality, and also, most importantly, the quality of the imaging.

Nick Talamantes  

So it sounds like you guys are really embracing this idea of the digital operating room, which I believe really started to take off a few years ago now. 2020, around the pandemic, you see a lot of players coming in with ideas to make the operating room smarter, more connected, bringing even the world together, in some cases, as you guys are doing to have Doctor scrubbing in a way. There are now a lot of players in this space, with similar technologies and complementary technologies. What sort of distinguishes med inbox from the other players in this wider digital surgery market?

Nicolas Gausserand  

That was a that was a couple of things. But what is interesting is to look what happens, really, we had multiple factors, the COVID was was an important factor, because before the COVID, we were already working on proctoring on remote support. That's a real trend for the industry to pull the remote support and protein, and the reason is quite simple. It's cost effective. Because this is this is very important. The second question is about carbon that today, and it's becoming reality, and the next generation of physicians will be ready in that there's a real impact traveling is a really light. So giving the option to have a view in room and be able to do everything remote is very important. And before the COVID we were just looking about pilot project. So we used to work we have we had a large footprint, large base of installed customers. And we were discussing with industry about creating pilots. So let's try to see that the industry is not moving very fast. And the COVID did change everything because at one point, it was the only option. So the center's who were able to continue to provide education as well as the ones who are using our technologies or similar technologies of course, and then the industry, they wanted to develop new therapies, and the only option for them to add food in in an operating room or lab was to have a camera or an integrated system in order to see everything and to be able to give guidance remotely for all of them. So, this was before COVID You are doing COVID It was like that and after the COVID Everybody understood that this will be the future.

Nick Talamantes  

So it sounds to me like COVID really created an awareness for the need for a technology that brings people into the AOR or is there still sort of a awareness gap that you guys have to help them cross in order to adopt.

Nicolas Gausserand  

No the wellness now is here. And when you are discussing with a physician or when you are discussing with the hospital administration, they are totally aware that they should have something some way in the lab or in your to give external access. So this is now this is this is quite clear. The question is how to have everything's too true because the real problem of your spitals is when the the data is going out unstructured. I mean, what is the competition today we have, of course competitors running in the same area even adverse event today even though it's the seventh today, but we all have one of our competitor in the pocket It's not me because I let my phone on the table. A lot of people are using what is wherever, like messenger or WhatsApp to transmit images in an unstructured way. That means with the patient names to everybody. And there's a lot of stories like that. And the objective of the hospital would be to stop that point to say, Okay, we have to give you a tool in order to stop using WhatsApp using messenger. And it's a reality. And we had some experience with a few centers outside of so we are from France. And we have a couple of islands in the Caribbean or in the Indian Ocean. And we used to work with a team in the Indian Ocean. And at the beginning, when they started to welcome on the integration of the video in their lab. They went to the hospital administration, with a couple of slides about what they are doing today. And it was all about what happened. They said, This is what we are doing. Wow. And we assure that you don't want us to do that. Right? So give us the correct tool to in order to be able to do that.

Nick Talamantes  

So they're demanding your product in this case.

Nicolas Gausserand  

Feds mandate, yes. 

Nick Talamantes  

That's a fantastic situation to be in. What brings you to LSI this year, tell us about what you're hoping to achieve who you're hoping to meet and what you're hoping to get out of this experience.

Nicolas Gausserand  

We are looking, of course for partnerships and partnerships is key. Because most of these businesses really dive industry and we are seeking for partners. So, we have developed a major partnership it will be announced in in the upcoming days with one of the big names in the in the medical device industry. And we are we want to develop same partnerships with with other players. And we also here to seek to find some some some money to accelerate the business. Today we we don't have a sales department at Medinbox. And we are in the process to develop that. So we want to expand so to develop the sales and expand the sales to to another level.

Nick Talamantes  

Well, that's fascinating. Are you guys potentially planning to be joining us in Barcelona later this year?

Nicolas Gausserand  

Of course Barcelona is a is a three hour drive from from Toulouse. And it's a great city and the venue is amazing.

Nick Talamantes  

I've never been so I'm excited. I hope to see you guys there Nicolas, thank you so much for joining us the studio.