Healthtech startup SigTuple, which recently raised $19 million in series B funding from investors, including Accel Partners and IDG Venture, aims to make screening tests more accurate with the use of robotics, AI and cloud computing. Founded by Tathagato Rai Dastidar, Rohit Kumar Pandey and Apurv Anand in April 2015, the company has grown from a team of five to 90 doctors, robotics engineers, data scientists, platform developers, regulatory and intellectual property experts. The founders tell Shilpa Phadnis and Rachel Chitra about making medical devices in India despite being ‘outsiders’ in the healthcare industry
Was it hard to build medical devices without any background in healthcare?
Pandey: When we started, everyone looked at us with scepticism. We didn’t have a background in healthcare. We wanted to create a data-driven, machine-learned, cloud-based solution for detection of abnormalities and trends in medical data for disease diagnosis. We said we wanted to “disrupt the healthcare space” with use of technology, but we realised we were using the wrong words. Doctors and medical professionals prefer “revolutionise” to disrupt.
Has there been more scepticism after the Theranos debacle (California-based healthtech startup that allegedly made false claims about its diagnostic tests and new products to raise funds)?
Dastidar: Oh lots! It created so many problems for us. Internally, Theranos is the ‘T-word’. We took six months to raise Series A. We found investors who bought into the longer-term vision, but that took time. Most investors said, ‘you have a grand vision but don’t have a background in medical device manufacturing’. The feedback was that our product was too good to be true. We spent the first four months having to explain what AI does.
What is AI100 and how did it come about?
Pandey: We spoke to a lab and found that the most common problem was that slides were still being read manually. There was a need to digitise slides. After much trial and error, we came up with this invention, using an iPhone, microscope and conveyor belt to read 100 slides an hour. But labs were hesitant to adopt it. Lab owners were like, ‘what if my lab assistant steals my iPhone?’ So we went back to the drawing board, and came up with a patented device, AI 100. We have filed 19 patents of which 12 are in the US. Once we came up with a closed box solution, labs were keen on us.
What are the challenges you’ve faced?
Pandey: Mass production of AI 100. We had a great idea, but producing hundreds of the same unit was difficult. We needed to outsource the work to an industrial unit. Here, we hit a major roadblock. So we started developing our own in-house expertise. We hired mechanical and electrical engineers and now we have the capability to assemble 10-15 machines. Around the same time, we found a partner. Another hassle in India with manufacturing is that unless you can guarantee bulk orders, say 1,000 units, manufacturers don’t want to work with you.
How will this product and technology work in rural areas, which do not have the broadband capability of cities?
Pandey: We have added a graphics processing unit to the device. OnQuest was another partner that helped us develop a solution that could be commercialised. In remote locations, when there is no cloud connectivity, the model will run inside the device and the reports will be generated. We’ve named this software Shonit, which means blood in Sanskrit.
Many of your products have unique and interesting names. How do you choose them?
Dastidar: We use Sanskrit words because we wanted to give our products an Indian flavour. We are very proud of the fact that we are an Indian company, selling Indian products. It started with our product, Manthan, whose name is derived from an episode in Indian mythology, Samudra Manthana. Adi means beginning, drishti is eyesight. Then we realised that the naming convection in the healthcare industry is alphanumeric. So we came up with a new name for the hardware AI 100. The next version would be AI 200.
Now that you have the Indian regulator’s approval for AI 100, are you looking to patent it in the US and get FDA approval?
Pandey: We’ve got ISO13485 certification required by anyone in medical device manufacturing in India. We intend to get USFDA approval by the end of this year or early next year, and that’s when pre-marketing efforts in the US will start. Some investors suggested that we set up a US subsidiary but we didn’t want to. We want to be a global story from India and we will not compromise on that. After USFDA, we will get European approval in the next quarter or so. With these two approvals, we can enter any developed market.
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