MedTech True Quality Stories Powered by Greenlight Guru with host Jon Speer + Medical Device Leaders

Preparation for a colonoscopy is not a pleasant or positive experience. From laxatives to the invasiveness and sedation involved, preparing for a colonoscopy is something most patients dread and try to avoid. Fortunately, clinicians and patients can look forward to colonoscopy and colon cancer screening modalities that require no preparation.

Today’s guest is Alex Ovadia, CEO of Check-Cap. The company is developing a capsule called, C-Scan, for colon cancer screening, and a U.S. clinical trial has begun.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

● Alex describes the motivation behind Check-Cap’s capsule and meeting a need for no-prep to detect polyps from inside the body.

● Check-Cap’s capsule avoids sedation and insertion of a colonoscope in the patient’s body.

● Check-Cap’s capsule modality is simply “swallow and forget.” The capsule uses an algorithm that runs scanning throughout the colon.

● There’s a lot of room for error for patients who have a colonoscopy. Decision intelligence is being developed to prevent human errors that impact patients.

● Alex shares Check-Cap’s current stage of commercialization and upcoming milestones for its capsule. IRB approval has been received.

● Each year, about 880,000 deaths worldwide are due to colon cancer. Check-Cap’s capsule strives to make sure people have better and healthier lives.

● Quality is critical when it comes to the progression of commercializing. Alex describes efforts to maintain safety and compliance with Check-Cap’s capsule.

Surgery can be a challenging experience, not only for patients, but their clinicians and caregivers, as well. The lack of innovative medical devices with intelligent software following cardiothoracic surgery provided an opportunity for one MedTech company in particular.

Today’s guest is Evan Luxon, co-founder and CEO at Centese. The early stage company achieved 510(k) clearance from the FDA for its intelligent surgical drainage product called, Thoraguard. Centese followed a deliberate and diligent approach to design and development, while right-sizing its quality management system (QMS).

Listen to the full episode as this MedTech executive shares key insights, tips and best practices to help other MedTech leaders achieve similar success.

Some of the episode highlights include:
- Proactive vs. Reactive: Thoraguard’s core principles are safety, intelligence, and efficacy.
- No Rest for the Weary: Thoraguard automatically monitors patients without needing to rely on nurses to routinely check on patients.
- MedTech Space: Start by addressing a clinical problem that people are willing to pay for to solve clinical needs.
- Proof of Concept Prototypes: Reach out to as many surgeons and others early on to optimize lean launchpad methodology for relevant and reliable feedback.
- Quality Role and Regulations: Feedback helps medical device companies avoid feature creep and change scope to meet fundamental and required functionality.
- How to right-size your QMS: Build out the QMS as the project and company progress by knowing what’s needed at each phase of development.

In the U.S. alone, over 80% of the 5,000 biopsies conducted daily come back either falsely negative, or falsely positive. More than 350 breast cancer cases evade early detection because of misdiagnosis. Many of those errors can be avoided. There's one company in particular that is leading the charge with a truly innovative solution to this problem, Koios Medical.

Koios is proprietary software that has the power to meaningfully elevate the quality of medical care and support accurate decision-making by ‘seeing’ what humans can’t. Koios Medical offers accurate ultrasound results through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms that patients need and physicians find valuable to support early detection and accurate treatment of breast cancer and other diseases.

Today’s episode features three guests from Koios Medical offering valuable insight to listeners on how they've been successful in imagining, implementing and innovating a true quality medical device that aims to redefine cancer diagnosis as we know it today, and how other medical device professionals can follow in their footsteps.

Some of the highlights of the show include:
● Word Origin and Why: Koios is Titan God of Wisdom, Foresight, and Intellect.
● Regulatory Success: Koios Medical’s DS Breast 2.0 received FDA clearance to assist physicians with AI-based software.
● Koios engineers started using AI/ML algorithms to do face-recognition work for a U.S. defense contractor, and transitioned to adapt AI/ML to do more global good.
● Why now? AI has existed for decades, but only recently has computing power allowed massive amounts of data to become useable in a practical sense.
● Competitive Edge: Koios is doing everything possible to maintain its market lead by building an efficient and expedient processing engine and software.
● Design and Development Direction: Koios’ path to clearance commercialization involves behavioral, technical, and financial challenges/opportunities.
● Reason for Regulations: Koios’ mission is to improve decision making for diagnosing cancer and Reason for Regulations: Quality makes us better.

Patients, providers, and companies are already experiencing the benefits of FDA’s Case for Quality Program and CMMI Institute’s Medical Device Discovery Appraisal Program (MDDAP).

Today’s guest is Becky Fitzgerald, principal and co-founder of Two Harbors Consulting. She’s passionate about her involvement with Case for Quality and being a lead appraiser for MDDAP.

In this episode, Becky gives listeners an inside look into her instrumental work and involvement with FDA's Case for Quality and MDDAP programs, including how these initiatives were started and have evolved since, as well as lessons learned along the way.

● Case for Quality: Originated due to auditing issue that revealed problems with the quality of medical devices from fully vs. non-fully compliant organizations.
● Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI): FDA selected model to help companies improve the quality of medical devices without more regulations.
● Multiple medical device entities produced proof of concept and pilot program to show benefits, effectiveness, and value of Case for Quality and MDDAP.
● Compliance vs. Quality: Medical device industry’s checkbox and compliance mindset can create direct and indirect impact on quality.
● MDDAP focuses on conversations with people; the intent and goals for documenting or recording are different.
● Processes vs. Attributes: Is there a way to predict if a project will succeed?
● Lessons Learned: Medical device industry isn’t great at estimating work, project management, and handling changes to non-functional requirements.
● Minor Changes, Major Impact: Ask for input, receive it, and make changes to build momentum for quality.

If you or your child have ever experienced ear infections, you know how difficult (and painful) they can be to diagnose and treat with prescribed medicines and procedures.

Today’s guest is Ryan Shelton, CEO and founder of PhotoniCare, whose team has developed TOMi Scope, a non-invasive handheld imaging platform that uses light to see through ear tissue. PhotoniCare’s TOMi Scope looks directly at the disease, not the eardrum.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

● Middle ear infection is the leading cause of hearing loss, surgeries, and antibiotic use, especially in children.
● Traditionally, an otoscope is used that results in a 50% misdiagnosis rate.
● TOMi Scope looks like the otoscope, but optical coherence tomography (OCT) images of middle ear increase accuracy, eliminate subjectivity and speculation.
● TOMi Scope is simple to use by nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and technicians. It’s not anymore complicated than a flashlight or magnifying glass.
● Parents and patients feel helpless due to limitations of standard care for middle ear disease.
● MedTech startups experience challenges, obstacles, successes, and barriers with fundraising, compliance, regulatory, quality, design, and testing.
● Trying to avoid being on FDA’s radar? Embrace the regulatory landscape.
● A picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth a thousand pictures.

Is creating a culture of quality a top priority at your MedTech company? But you’re not sure how or when to start?

Today’s guest is Devon Campbell, founder of Prodct LLC, a MedTech company helping to establish and implement holistic, efficient, and practical product development and manufacturing strategies.

In this episode, Devon shares valuable insight with listeners on the topic of quality culture within companies. His proven approach has helped a wide range of medical device professionals achieve success, from both a cultural and product development standpoint.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

● When: Sooner than later, start a culture of quality to accelerate clinical/regulatory approval and achieve market success for your company.
● How: Devon helps companies create a culture of quality by aligning their systems and processes to meet future goals and objectives.
● Devon works with all staff, teams, and departments involved to better understand challenges and changes with a company’s quality management system (QMS).
● Culture of Quality: Start small and early on with the end result in mind to address compliance and quality related to product development.
● Compliance vs. True Quality: Purposefully and consciously develop and deliver a quality product and data to meet the needs of those who benefit from the device.
● Exciting events and exits are not all about making money by being acquired by companies, but receiving acknowledgement and appreciation from them.
● NanoView is a perfect example of how to build a culture of quality by going above and beyond, even overboard, by implementing and using a QMS.
● Document control is more important than you realize. Approach it in a phase-savvy way; pause and push yourself to document early and revise often.