“We've only just begun.”
Williams and Nichols (sung by The Carpenters)
My friends,
Tiresias has said and repeatedly so, that everything changed in May 2024 when the Mayo Clinic took up Optiscan’s confocal laser endomicroscope (CLE), to be the seeing eye of their surgical robot. This is the imprimatur that changed everything. But this beginning was the result of, the ending of the real new beginning, the one that occurred three years ago. You see my friends, things such as the recent flow of news from Optiscan, which has become more and more exciting, don’t just happen. It not just luck. Luck is important, but more important is ability, the understanding, the knowledge, the contacts, and the hard work. This apparent new beginning started with the complete change in the board, a new chairman, and an appointment of a new CEO/MD three years ago. But again, this too doesn't just happen. What is Tiresias talking about?
The critical change, the catalyst, bridge, the bridge-maker, or in Tiresias’s second tongue, Latin for bridge maker, “the pontiff”, a certain Australian-Singaporean/Singaporean-Australian, taking equity in the then struggling company and joining the board. He is Optiscan’s bridge not only to but a bridge between the then biggest shareholder, Bob Peters’ Peters Investments in Australia and Richard Chandler’s Clermont Group based in Singapore, being close to both. The vision and the changes, the capital and subsequent investments, the changes in the board and the management have been crucial to where we find ourselves. Before goingfurther Tiresias would like to make a small point here. His friends might startto think that Tiresias is in some way inside Optiscan. This is not so. Tiresiasis an avatar of his patron, Apollo the Archer, who strikes from afar. So it iswith Tiresias, the blind seer, who sees from afar.
So why is this important now? Tiresias knows, that to see the future, one must understand the present and how it came to be from the past. It is of course not easy to see the future, but understanding the recent past and the present, and understanding the actions in the present makes seeing into the future so much clear. Tiresias would like to draw your attention to how Optiscan has handled its recent actions in the United States as an indicator of something much bigger coming soon. Frustrated by the slow progress in the US, they opened an office in Minneapolis Minnesota, arguably the Silicon Valley of American MedTech, in the neighbourhood of Rochester MN and Mayo Clinic. This will not only facilitate the Mayo Clinic collaboration and the whole FDA business but is a notice to the whole of the American MedTech universe. But more importantly, in Tiresias’s mind’s eye, it is a dress rehearsal for something much bigger. Asia! Yes, my friends, Asia beckons. Asia does not want to be and is no longer subservient to the tyranny of FDA and all its vagaries and certainly not to the US perceived primacy in MedTech. Singapore, China, South Korea, Thailand, and even Indonesia are all aspiring real and hungry players in MedTech future. They are looking to enter this and looking to leapfrog traditional practices and obsolete medical technologies as they are in so many other areas. Tiresias believes that Optiscan has the technology, the management and is now getting a track record and has received third-party validation from two of the greatest institutions in the field, Mayo and Zeiss. This is not unnoticed or of no interest to aspiring Asian players. But this needs contacts and nurturing. And this why, Optiscan’s Singapore connections, “The Bridge”, providing the connections, and Clermont, a major Singaporean investor and a significant player in the Asian healthcare market. Think, my friends, what this really means.
Tiresias realises he is being somewhat oracular, perhaps even enigmatical, demanding a lot from his friends and perhaps asking a lot to be read between the lines. Tiresias may be indulging slightly in his divination, and though the future is sometimes veiled, in his mind’s eye, turned to the east, there is rising of something soon and something big.
Until next week
