Piotr Wygocki, MIM Solutions - Studio Interview | LSI Europe ‘22

Transcription

Nick Talamantes  0:00  

Piotr, thanks for joining us here at LSI Europe.

Piotr Wygocki  0:02  

So happy to be here.

Nick Talamantes  0:03  

Yeah. Tell me a little bit about what you're doing at MIM Solutions. How are you guys unique in this emerging field of fertility AI?

Piotr Wygocki  0:14  

Okay, so we are company based in Warsaw. So we are doing machine learning for IVF clinics, we've got solutions, which will help couples to achieve their great dream of having a baby.

Nick Talamantes  0:28  

That's incredible. So how are you using artificial intelligence to help couples that have fertility disorders?

Piotr Wygocki  0:35  

Okay, so that, I mean, this is just a great place to be for a mathematician, I mean, IVF, the whole process is extremely complex. There are many stages. And although it's one of the greatest achievements of our times, it's still, unfortunately, not as efficient as we would like to. And our main goal is to, I mean, we were able to identify this very important changes in IVF, and automatize them with AI. And to be more specific, we are automatizing ultrasound examination. So I mean, this is one of the most important examination you do during IVF. Basically, if you want to do the treatment, you need to visit the clinic at least six times during a month. And majority of these visits are for ultrasound examination, we want to make the patient journey much more easier, but by automatically automating this part.

Nick Talamantes  1:44  

So tell me what makes you guys different from the competition in this emerging field of fertility AI?

Piotr Wygocki  1:50  

Okay, thanks for this question. I believe in medicine, it's all about trust. So you need to trust that this algorithm really does what it's meant to be. And I think this is what distinguishes us. So we are still strongly connected with academic world. So me myself, I'm still I work at the university. So we still do the basic research concerning trustworthy interest interpretability of the algorithms. So if you run this algorithms, two times on very similar data, you expect similar results. Unfortunately, unfortunately, it's not always the case. So I think this is what really distinguishes us from the competition. So we've got in our team, the best Polish scientists award, for example, in computer science, extremely strong and talented team, so

Nick Talamantes  2:50  

That's great to hear. It's really important to build a strong team when you're a startup. Why don't you tell me a little bit about how big the opportunity is for this technology that you're building?

Piotr Wygocki  3:03  

I mean, opportunity is huge. So there are 300 million peoples who struggle with fertility disorders. So it's, I mean, this is one out of six couples, they struggle to conceive a child. So it's a very serious problem. And availability of these kinds of services is unfortunate, unfortunate, very low. So there are states in United States without single IVF clinic, for example. So there is a huge market gap. And the greatest reasons behind behind us is still the quality the costs now of this whole  procedure, and our main goal is to improve that.

Nick Talamantes  3:49  

That's great. Tell me what's the success rate look like for IVF without AI versus with your technology?

Piotr Wygocki  3:58  

Okay, so I believe the main problem over here is actually the standardization repeatability. So there are clinics, for example, for donating, they've got 10% success rate, and some of them they've got 80% success rates. So we've got this huge differences because of lack of standardization and this heterogeneity of the process overall, the average success rate is around 30%. And for the best clinics, it's around 50 60%. So our goal is to make every clinic be able to achieve this high efficiency rate.

Nick Talamantes  4:39  

What stage are you guys at right now? Are you using AI your AI technology in clinics today? Or are you still clinical? Tell me a bit about where you guys are at

Piotr Wygocki  4:51  

Right now testing our solutions. So we are after validation? We are not just jumping into clinical tests to our to confirm our value,

Nick Talamantes  5:01  

That's, that's great. You know, I realized that ultrasound technology is starting to come into the patient's home, you're seeing ultrasound devices that can be run off of smartphones. They're making them smaller and more accessible. Democratizing ultrasound, really. What opportunities does this create to bring the IVF clinic into the patient's home with a technology like yours? 

Piotr Wygocki  5:27  

This is most definitely the next steps. And we believe it this is this is the future emerging right now. So our first step would be to move this examination from clinic to any gynecological office. And the next step would be to bring it to home. There are already pretty cheap devices. It's just a matter of time to integrate.

Nick Talamantes  5:56  

Yeah, we spoke with bioterror a bit about the technology that you're developing over MIM solutions. At the end of the day, what's really the mission or purpose that's driving your company?

Ula Sankowska  6:07  

Okay. Well, it's I like the question very much I like to talk about our mission, it's actually pretty straightforward. We want to help people that are struggling with fertility disorders, we want to bring help to patients that are fighting or are having or have to undergo through this IVF procedure, which is not to be honest, it's not a very pleasant thing to do. It's very, it's emotionally stressful, it's, it's costly, it's, it's a burden for a couple that has to undergo this procedure. And what we want to deal with MIM Solutions is that we want to, first of all, make it more the IVF procedure more affordable for couples, we want to make it more accessible, we want to lower the cost, increase the IVF procedure, the success rate, most of all, because sometimes, you know, we just go to IVF clinic and you hear we have like 5%, of getting a baby getting a healthy pregnancy, which is kind of you know, stressful than might be very depressing. I was patient myself for six years, I was fighting for my kids. It's a happy end story. But I know I've been there. I know the feeling. And you believe it or not. People, I think the couples sometimes will do anything to have the full family. So our mission is to have first of all the patients. But we've understood that with AI, we can help the clinicians that will afterwards right through their job and or increasing their their quality of health care. They will bring, bring it to the patient. And so actually, our end customers is a patient what we're really thinking about, but but we work with clinics. We work with clinics from Poland, from Malaysia, from Turkey, and we want to expand our collaboration. And I think we are pretty on the good way to do it to do this. And we're pretty successful. And so that, well, this is more or less the mission.

Nick Talamantes  8:17  

So tell me what brings you to LSI Europe?

Ula Sankowska  8:20  

Well, first of all, it's it's a summit that brings investors, strategists and you know, innovators together. So we, as we are innovators, we thought it could be a great opportunity to meet. First of all other companies, other startups like ours, we could just exchange our knowledge about you know, how it works, how, how in Europe, the innovation, deployment works for us. And and secondly, we're looking for an investor from the industry, it would be just perfect scenario for us to have an investor from IVF industry or someone from fertility market. And as we want to deploy our solutions worldwide, I guess we need support, as well and some kind of a launch pad that would enable us to do that. So this is why actually we came to LSI. And, and we love it. We met met some very interesting people investors as well. We talked we have very good talks. We also bring home, so to say lessons learned from you know, good questions that probably we have to work through another day and worse, so, but yeah, it was it was a very good experience. So we liked it.

Nick Talamantes  9:40  

Absolutely. I know that startups learn a lot from meeting and getting those one on one meeting with investors. They provide you guys with valuable guidance. So I hope at the minimum, you walk away with that, but at the maximum I hope you guys find the partners and investors that you're looking for.

Ula Sankowska  9:55  

Definitely, yes, let's keep the fingers crossed for us.

Nick Talamantes  9:59  

We love Thank you so much for letting us know what you guys are up to at MIM Solutions I look forward to hearing more the next time we meet

Ula Sankowska  10:06  

okay thank you very much for talking to you