Concept
Bringing more advanced analysis, detection, and precision to medical devies in and out-of care centers.
Longer Description
When looking at AI enabled medical devices there are 3 pathways that we see in limited research:
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Better care via doctor companions - Advanced clinical devices that utilize ML to add a layer of checking/understanding/amplifying possible signals in a sea of noise (think things like AI enabled MRIs, the endoscopy companies, stethoscope cos etc.) Essentially partners/amplifiers for doctors.
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Early detection/monitoring + intervention - Enabling clinical level telemedicine by bringing clinical grade diagnostics and monitoring and moving it out of the clinic to the home. The current state of many rare diseases or even daily health issues is that they do have remote monitoring but it's an onerous process for the care providers.
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Upgrading existing devices - New versions of existing devices that take devices from dumb to smart and from general purpose to personalized/improving (whisper is a good example though they own hardware, Concha Labs works with existing hearing aids as well)
We believe each of these opportunities offer investible companies, however it is likely Compound will be better at investing in #2 and #3 as they can have larger scale, a slightly different sales cycle and go to market, and a larger investor base (medical device investors are often narrow). In addition, companies in #2 and #3 can help with a core thing that payers care about which is *adherence.*
Other thoughts
- Areas of focus?
- Radiology seems incredibly crowded and is much more clinical, thus the bar is likely higher for us to back a company here.
- Cardiology is a passion area and heart disease is the largest killer in our country. Eko and a few other companies exist within cardiology but I think this is an interesting area to explore. Apple Watch is a competitor here though and that worries me.
- There are a long list of other areas too but the way to break things down probably is 1) cost to payers, 2) number of people affected in the US and Europe and then just start hyptohesizing/see who exists.
- What is the ambition of scope or likelihood this gets rolled into a single wearable device versus a special purpose device? Apple watch and airpods are intimate sensors that will only get closer to us. Something like a hearing aid could even be replaced by airpods someday but likely not in near future.
- Do moats entirely come from data acquisition, product innovation, or something else?
- And I think this is actually where the biggest opportunities exist. If you build something that solves an immediate problem AND intentionally generates data flows for ML development, you will set yourself up for success. There's no shortage of imaging, video, and even audio data in healthcare that either isn't being captured at all or is being captured haphazardly. If you can build a continual data capture flow in this space it will likely lead to a sustainable long-term advantage. https://outofpocket.health/p/1eed6e31-f709-4806-800e-c1932a536526
Comparable Companies