Apologies in advance for the long post, I have compiled an investment research paper and thought i'd share some of my notes. Happy to keep sharing if people are interested.
PEOPLE INVOLVED
CEO: Dr. Ron Weinberger - I think we’re all familiar with Ron’s story now, the man has done nothing short of an amazing job with NAN. I know there’s lots of successful CEO’s out there, but not many have successfully taken an ASX listed R&D company to a billion dollar + enterprise with global distribution of a CE/TGA and FDA approved product in the medical space… Our front man at EMV, Dr Ron Weinberger, is one of the very few who have this rare skillset.
Clinical Development: Professor Stuart Crozier - Stuart’s name is one that is globally synonymous with medical imaging, with publications referring to him as “one of the world’s leading innovators in medical imaging technology”. He is well known for his advancements in MRI. Stuart co-developed technology that vasty enhanced MRI’s. “The technology is now central to more than 65% of all MRI scanners manufactured and has been used in billions of scans.”
Chief Inventor: Professor Amin Abbosh - Professor Abbosh is world renowned in electromagnetic techniques and is ranked number 1 with over 40 peer reviewed papers (SCOPUS 2007-2017). Prof. Abbosh leads a team of more than 30, working on the project all in their own areas of expertise. On the UQ website it mentions what he wants as pre-requisites for people to join his team. Amin is clearly particular who joins his team which is good for us as it means we’re only getting the best and brightest minds!
Product Development: Robert Tiller - Mr Tiller has over 25 years’ experience in the medical device design and commercialisation. He is the founder of the highly-regarded and award-winning device development company, Tiller Design. In collaboration with the R&D team at Nanosonics, Tiller design developed the Trophon Device, the flagship product for Nanosonics (ASX:NAN) underpinning their ~$1bn market cap. Tiller design also developed products from Resmed, a ~$20bn market cap co. To my understanding, Robert has hired someone to step in his shoes and oversee the day-to-day operations at Tiller Design, so that Robert devote more time directly to EMV and is directly engaged rather than just via Tiller Design… To me, this speaks volumes.
Chairman: John Keep - John has extensive experience in managing both start-ups and enterprise level businesses. As CEO of Queensland Diagnostic Imaging, John grew the business to become the state’s leading private imaging group and led the successful trade sale of the group to Mayne Pharma for $109 million. John leads the development and execution of EMvision’s strategy and manages its research and engineering partnerships.
PRICE
As an example/comparison, Resapp (RAP) climbed to a peak market cap of ~$300mil without any regulatory clearance or revenue etc. Even after a considerable fall a few months back in RAP, their market cap is still $90mil. RAP’s market cap also rose by ~$10mil recently on the ISO13485 announcement. EMvision already has ISO13485 certification and a market cap of a mere ~$19mil…
POTENTIAL MARKETS
Stroke - Stroke is the long-standing second-leading cause of death, globally, and has held that spot for decades now. In addition to this, stroke is also one of the leading causes of disability in the world.
Stroke costs the Australian economy approx. A$5billion per annum. I think the US is closer to around US$30billion and Europe approx. 50billion Euros.
When it comes to stroke, “Time is Brain” is commonly referred to in the industry, meaning that time is everything. The greater the time without intervention/treatment, the more brain cells dying and higher chance of disability or death.
This makes me think of the possibilities here being applications such as:
- Flying Doctor Service
- Cruise Ships
- Third World Countries with lower budgets for healthcare
- Ambulances
- Intensive Care Units/Stroke Departments
- Emergency Departments
- Post-operative bedside monitoring
- Sports Stadiums
- Aged Care homes
- Day Clinics, where portability and cost are both huge advantages.
Liver Disease - Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH) are becoming a focus of health organizations worldwide and is being viewed as the 21st Century’s public health threat, with billions of dollars being invested in to treatment. Right now, according to many online sources, diagnosis of NASH relies on invasive biopsies (which are extremely painful I’m told, carry a high risk to the patient’s safety and if that’s not bad enough, could also miss the bad tissue and give a false negative result… I guess kind of like a drill bit missing the orebody in mining exploration.
Imagine having a portable, low-cost piece of equipment which could be readily available in numerous locations, including perhaps the countries who don’t have budgets to afford other imaging modalities and screening can be carried out. Considering the forecast numbers of people with NALFD or NASH and just don’t know it is in the billions of people globally, picturing that in my head... it would jam up the system trying to screen the population.
I think the liver side of things is earlier stage than the brain scanner project/product, but by the sounds of it the liver studies will give some kind of near term idea what potential this technology may have in this application.
For those who haven't seen the Intro video....
(20min delay)