“…. if we excel in anything, it is our capacity for translating...

“…. if we excel in anything, it is our capacity for translating Idealism into action.”

Dr Charles H. Mayo M. D. (1931)

My friends,

It has indeed been a while since Tiresias picked up his quill and ink and put to paper. As you know, he had prophesied that he would await the sign for his return. And oh, my goodness, by Zeus, what a sign! A collaboration, a joint venture, with the greatest most recognisable medical institution in the world today, the Mayo Clinic. And not just say that my friends, if you will forgive and indulge Tiresias and permit him just a little name dropping, Tiresias’s Alma Mater. Yes, my friends, Tiresias spent some years and endured the cold winters in Rochester Minnesota, Mayo Clinic; part of his training and his medical finishing school. Tiresias understood how it had to be Rochester that frozen section biopsies had to be first developed. It was the Rochester winter that gave Will Mayo the idea to suggest to the pathologist to take the surgical biopsy out into the cold to snap freeze and examine it under the microscope. That was 1905. Almost exactly 120 years later that circle closes and a new beginning starts. Frozen section, with all its flaws and shortcomings, has served its purpose but a new technology beckons, and the inheritors of the Mayo tradition have seen and have seized the future of cancer surgery, and all surgery. Optiscan. And the future they have seen is Optiscan. And the future they have seen is with Optiscan. And this changes everything.

Now, I know everyone can look up May Clinic. Out of modesty Tiresias will not wax too lyrical, but something that may not be known, Mayo Clinic treats more patients with cancer than any other cancer centre in the America; more than MD Anderson in Houston, and more than Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York. But what excited Tiresias, is that “Mayo Clinic will take a financial interest in Optiscan’s technology”. This may have been noticed, but does anyone realise what this means and how much of an endorsement this really is? From what Tiresias saw when he was at The Clinic, as we alumni like to say, is a constant line of big Pharma and Big Med Tech, seeking audience, proposing deals, and wanting to put money in just to have The Clinic look at their technology or drugs. There was never any question of Mayo doing what they have undertaken to do with Optiscan. Tiresias congratulates CEO Professor Farah on his dealing with The Clinic, for this changes everything.

Tiresias will not go into full detail of the science and technology, in today’s epistle, for he is only just starting to get into his stride. Suffice it to say, it is truly a new paradigm in cancer surgery and cancer treatment. Tiresias is aware of the hype around so called “robotic surgery”. Most to today’s so called robotic surgery, and some friends may have paid out quite a few shekels to have their radical prostatectomies by robotic surgery. Sorry to say, but there was nothing robotic about it. It was all very much steered and operated by human hands. Optiscan with AI/Machine Learning will give us true robotic surgery. The Optiscan Confocal Laser Endomicroscope will be the eye, and with AI will direct the robot to remove malignancy, malignant cell by malignant cell if necessary. This is Robotic Surgery, and true Microsurgery. This is the future and future just changed. And this changes everything.

Until next week