For People with Purpose by SciPro

We delve into the development of Lucida Medical. Led by long time tech entrepreneur, Dr Antony Rix, he explains how they have grown with purpose and how that has set them apart. This episodes covers Antony’s transition into the world medical devices, how he and the team has continuously solved problems which has led to industry accuracy of their algorithm. And finally the purpose of Antony and Lucida’s mission which can never be underestimated. About Dr Anthony Rix Dr Antony Rix, CEO and Co-Founder, is a serial entrepreneur with 25 years' experience in software and AI. Antony’s first startup, Psytechnics, was based on his PhD in machine learning and was acquired by Netscout in 2011. After 12 years developing software, communications and medical devices at Cambridge technology consultancy TTP, he returned to startups in 2016 to found 8power, an industrial sensor manufacturer. He has led Lucida Medical since its inception in 2019, initially developing the company’s Pi technology and since 2021 building the team.

For People with Purpose is what SciPro stands for. Beats Medical is a purpose-driven DTx startup based in Ireland, working on CNC and other rare diseases, making their technology part of the solution. There is so much to love about this episode, and the crossover between SciPro and Beats Medical is clear to see. We are thankful that Ciara Clancy, the CEO, joined Nick for the penultimate episode of Series 5. In this episode, Ciara shares ideas on how to build a company driven by purpose, influencing both business decisions and hiring. As an added bonus, Ciara shares her words of wisdom when it comes to pharma partnerships. About Ciara: Dr. Ciara Clancy, founder, and CEO, is a chartered physiotherapist and researcher who attained a PhD in Neurosurgery Outcomes. While working in the clinic as a physiotherapist, Ciara realized the exponential reach she could have in treating patients through technology. From this, Ciara founded Beats Medical to deliver automated, clinically proven therapies to people with Central Nervous System conditions and Rare Diseases through technology. As a multi-award-winning entrepreneur, Ciara has been recognized by industry titans such as Google, Cartier, and EY, among many more. Ciara’s passion for changing the future of healthcare has brought her to the forefront of prominent industry events such as WIRED Health, Google Demo Day, CNS Leaders Forum, and saw her named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2019. In 2022, Ciara was awarded the European Prize for Women Innovators.

We are joined by their CTO, Eric Greveson to hear what has changed since the first episode. It is fair to say a lot has happened for Eric, Brainomix, SciPro and Nick in the last three years. Eric is the CTO of Brainomix. He received his 1st class M.Eng.in Engineering from Cambridge University, and has worked on a wide variety of computer vision projects. These include video processing and 3D graphics algorithms, real-time data capture software, parallel grid computing systems, and data visualization. He has extensive experience in software engineering, design, and programming with languages such as C++ and Python. At Brainomix, Eric works with the clinical and business teams to deliver the company's state-of-the-art medical imaging software. Enjoy the episode.

Very rarely do we get a chance to delve into the innovation within large multi national companies. Therefore we are very proud to present the latest episode with Darren Porras, who has spent his career innovating in large medical device companies and continues to support them and smaller start ups in his consulting role. This is a great episode if you are looking for the culture of innovation in different size of companies and how the landscape in the industry has changed in recent years. Enjoy the episode.

After more than 10 years as a powerhouse in DTx it was a pleasure to have Kim join us on the podcast. Kim Baden-Kristensen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Brain+. A company based in Copenhagen that are seeking to meet the challenge of Dementia and Alzheimer's care by harnessing the power of technology and AI. In this episode, we take a deep dive into his career, his purpose and what Brain+ have achieved, achieving and seeking to achieve. Enjoy the episode.

LLMs in healthcare. This is the episode we finally tackled the topic in depth. In this episode Nick is joined by the CTO and Co-Founder of Alex Therapeutics, Oliver Fleetwood. Not only do they discuss the technology behind the fantastic Alex product and future products but they tackle the readiness of patients and regulatory bodies for LLMs to be used in mental health care. This is a super exciting episode so enjoy!

Building a MedTech start-up with purpose. .. Nick Mahoney is joined by CEO of Sonio, Cecile Dubois. Sonio is an AI-software guiding practitioners during prenatal ultrasound scans to secure prenatal screening and optimize prenatal diagnosis. In this episode, Nick unpacks the technology behind the amazing product and how Cecile has balanced building a diverse company with industry expertise.

In the first episode of series five, host Nick Mahoney was joined by the CCO of Doccla, Tom Breeze. For the first time in our podcast studio, Nick and Tom discuss the transition he made from private equity to healthcare and what drives him about the mission of Doccla. Situated in an exciting period of growth for Doccla, this is great episode to learn more about remote patient monitoring systems and the go to market strategies needed across different locations.

In this episode Nick and Jon discuss the future of hiring into Computational Chemistry teams and how the use of AI is affecting this. A topic Nick spoke at great length about at the #aisummit also. Jon has been through many technological changes in the industry and so his expertise and knowledge shines through with some great nuggets of information. Jon Heal is the Silico team (also known as prosaRx) leader at RxCelerate which is a rapidly growing company conducting service based work for drug discovery programs based in Cambridge, UK. Jon was previously a co-founder of Prosarix Ltd and Head of Computational Chemistry at Evolva SA, a swiss biotech company focussing on innovative approaches within synthetic biology space. Jon has over 20 years experience of drug discovery, was instrumental in the development of the ProtoDiscovery™ technology platform and its application in over 50 drug discovery projects with many different client companies.

Following the successful conclusion of another JP Morgan Conference in 2023, Nick sat down with Dr Juana Candia to hear about her take on this year's conference and what we should take from it. Juana brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in Biotech, Precision Medicine, and Cell & Gene Therapy. She is the co-founder of one of the first Biotech startups in South America, pursued scientific discoveries and built businesses in seven countries and four continents. Accelerated innovation pipelines, authored 20+ patents families, designed, and delivered growth strategies resulting in business turnarounds and double-digit growths while working for Roche, DSM, Novartis, GSK, and Scailyte (Start-up). Currently serving on Boards of Directors and Advisers to emerging companies with transformative technologies and disruptive business models.

Focusing on the use of AI in drug discovery, Nick is joined by Quentin Perron; CSO of Iktos. Iktos are a French biotech for ligand-based and structure-based de novo drug design focusing on multi-parametric optimization. Quentin Perron is a medicinal chemist by training. He holds a PhD in organometallic chemistry from the University of Geneva. During his post-doc fellowship at UCLA, he worked on the total synthesis of Brasillicardin A, a complex natural molecule known for having potent immunosuppressive activity. After working as a medicinal chemist in CNS indications at Laboratoires Servier, he switched to data science and chemoinformatics at Quinten, a company specialising in data science services. In 2016, with his business partners Yann Gaston-Mathé and Nicolas Do Huu, he co-founded Iktos, a start-up company developing AI technologies for new drug design. He is now the CSO of the company.

Looking at AI in Drug Discovery begins with a fascinating episode featuring Dr David Wright, CTO and Co-Founder of Kuano. The discussion delved deep into the revolutionary role Kauno is playing in the Drug Discovery process. Dr David Wright is the CTO and Co-Founder of ⁠Kuano⁠, a startup whose mission is to use a unique combination of simulation and AI to bring quantum detail to drug design. By starting from an exquisitely detailed picture of enzyme mechanisms they are looking to create a new generation of therapeutics, whose current projects include creating novel anti-bowel cancer drugs. Before co-founding Kuano, Dr Wright used simulation to understand how atomic details impact drug binding at UCL. His journey to Kuano involved collaborating in large international collaborative projects (CompbioMed, CCP-SAS, CHAIN, INSPIRE) that brought together experts from the supercomputing, academic and pharmaceuticals world to advance drug design. His multidisciplinary outlook is reflected in how Kuano is bringing a new perspective to structure-based drug design.

In this episode, Nick and Dr Bouarfa discuss her journey to becoming a CEO, the uniqueness of OKRA.ai and most interestingly the future of female leaders in a STEM subject, particularly within Life Sciences. Dr Loubna Bouarfa is the founder and CEO of ⁠OKRA.ai⁠ - a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company for life sciences, that supports the industry in bringing the right drug to the right patient at speed. Prior to OKRA.ai, Loubna led different machine learning positions in startups and academia. Loubna was a member of the European Union High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, where she mainly focused on achieving competitive business impact with AI. She was named an MIT Technology Review Top Innovator Under 35, a Forbes 50 Top Women In Tech, and won several prizes, including CEO of the Year 2019 at the Cambridge Independent Science and Technology Awards and Best Female-Led Startup at the StartUp Europe Awards in 2019. Recently, Loubna has been selected as a European Young Leader (EYL40) for 2022.

In this awesome episode, Nick discusses with Alex Menys, CEO of Motilent, their current growth and more broadly the state of AI in MedTech. Alex Menys is the CEO of Motilent and his main focus is around measuring treatment response in Crohn's Disease but he is also actively involved in a range of projects around all things gastro including constipation, gastroparesis, IBS and any disease that features some form of GI symptom. Motilent specialises in the assessment of digestive diseases using medical image analysis. Their primary focus areas include Crohn’s Disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Gastroparesis although they support a range of projects across Digestive Health. This is a really intriguing episode because the clinical pathway of Motilent is so complex, and therefore Alex is a huge advocate and very vocal voice for the change needed within the Digestive Health pathway.

In this episode, Nick talks to Albane Grandjean from Gleamer. Gleamer develops medical-grade AI solutions to support radiologists and emergency physicians in their daily work. Their solutions rely on powerful Artificial Intelligence algorithms, to detect and localise lesions on medical images. They have had great success in recent years with their first product, BoneView and they are now working on releasing additional products for utilisation by radiologists. Albane Grandjean is Head of Marketing & Clinical Affairs & General Manager. With more than 10 years of experience in marketing & commercial roles in Healthcare, Albane brings her passion for innovation in care and knowledge of medical imaging devices. What is particularly interesting about this episode is how Gleamer has underpinned their development within clinical experts for every product and Albane highlights this as a key to their successes.

Nick discussed with Sebastian Durandeu from Feebris the transition into MedTech, what to expect when it comes to documentation, and working with ML on the edge. Sebastian is the Head of Software Engineering at Feebris where he leads the software team building the next generation of remote patient monitoring tools using machine learning. He is a software engineer with 10+ years of experience and in the past he has helped numerous companies build applications and services for the Cloud and adopt emerging technologies. For those who are thinking about making the leap to MedTech, this is a really interesting episode to listen to.

Earlier in the series, we were honoured to be joined by Dr Tim Guilliams, the CEO and Co-Founder of Healx. Healx have created a suite of AI products and platforms to revolutionise the drug discovery process of rare diseases. It is a truly exciting time for Healx as their first process has reached clinical trials! Tim is a tech entrepreneur from the Cambridge Cluster, passionate about using AI to accelerate treatments for rare diseases. The mission-driven technology company, Healx are pioneering the next wave of drug discovery in order to bring novel, effective treatments to rare disease patients around the world. In this role, Tim has been listed in ⁠The Sunday Times Maserati 100 ⁠list of entrepreneurs in 2019, was named as ‘One to watch’ in The Telegraph’s ⁠Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders⁠ in 2020, and was selected as a member of the Forbes Technology Council in 2022. Tim is also the Co-Founder and Trustee of the Cambridge Rare Disease Network (CRDN). Prior to Healx and CRDN, he obtained his PhD at the University of Cambridge in the field of Biophysics and Neuroscience, developing nanobody technology for Parkinson's disease. Before moving to Cambridge, UK, Tim obtained an MEng in Bio- and Chemical-Engineering from the University of Brussels.

Nick is joined by Dr.⁠Muhunthan Thillai⁠, the co-founder and CEO of ⁠Qureight⁠ and they discuss the innovative way they are using AI to allow for effective drug development in complex diseases. This is also a fantastic episode for understanding how founders from a medical background have built an AI company. Dr.Muhunthan Thillai is the co-founder and CEO of Qureight, a medical technology company in Cambridge which aims to pioneer data curation in complex diseases. By structuring image and biomarker data from biopharma and healthcare institutions, Qureight uses their AI-assisted platform to look for new trial endpoints in complex diseases including Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, Lung Cancer and Pulmonary Hypertension.

In this episode, Nick Mahoney speaks with Dr Mickael Tardy, the CSO from Hera-Mi. This episode is not one to be missed if you are looking to learn about taking risks and the opportunities available in Europe for international learning in software development and especially in medical imaging. Mickael Tardy is a CSO of Hera-MI, a medical imaging software company in Nantes (France), building AI-based solutions for healthcare, focusing primarily on breast cancer. Mickael studied in Russia and France for his double degree in engineering before starting as a software engineer in medical imaging. After seven years in the field and looking for a new challenge, Mickael joined Hera-MI in its early days and started a PhD in Deep Learning while building the company at the same time. Today, after defending his PhD, Mickael takes care of all the research activities at Hera-MI, aiming for production-ready solutions.

In this episode, Nick speaks with Lucy Jung, Co-Founder of Charco Neurotech. Charco has created an incredible device that reduces the symptoms of Parkinson’s for patients and helps them live as close to normal lives as possible. Lucy’s passion for bettering the lives of those with Parkison’s is truly infectious, and hopefully, you will all be inspired by this episode. Lucy Jung co-founded Charco Neurotech after meeting members of the Parkinson's community whose symptoms prevented them from smiling. From then it has been Charco's goal to bring back smiles for people with long-term conditions. With a background in product design, Lucy conceived the CUE1 while studying the Innovation Design Engineering Master's at Imperial College and the Royal College of Art. With the support of some incredible institutions, advisors, and people with Parkinson's, this went on to become Charco Neurotech.