Haven’t posted for a while, as nothing of particular value to...

Haven’t posted for a while, as nothing of particular value to add, but thought I’d write something by way of an update. For the sake of full disclosure, I’ve consolidated my holding into my SMSF at just over 1% of the company (big chunk of my savings!), having slowly built up again following the Keysight dilution.

On the negative side, the trial process has been taking longer than I’d envisaged, from the perspective of a medical professional with research experience. I haven’t been involved in anything of the scale or complexity of the EMVision trials, however, and in retrospect I probably shouldn’t have been surprised– planning and securing approval for even relatively small-scale trials is regulation-bound, and just slow for a myriad of reasons.

Reading between the lines, I suspect there was some criticism of the quality of early images from one or more neurologists, although Ifelt that even those early images were great in that ostensibly they were able to diagnose ischaemic and haemorrhagic strokes with high sensitivity and specificity. The late 2023 images were of a substantially higher quality, reminding me of early CT pics. I hadn’t been expecting that degree of improvement so quickly, and was impressed. Presumably the quality has improved further since, though on a brief search today I couldn’t find anything more recent. Given that image quality development should be highly amenable to ongoing data input and algorithm progression, I don’t think this will be an issue.

The share price of course reached $4.20ish a couple of years ago but has languished somewhat since. Substantial investors, particularly institutional, are evidently taking a conservative approach (a) pending official confirmation of efficacy by means of regulatory approval, and (b) due to apprehension that medical staff are typically reluctant to commit constrained resources to a new device. Concerns about (a) are perhaps unfounded given that sensitivity and specificity have already compared very favourably to CT and MRI, including hints of superiority in some aspects. With regard to (b), I’m reassured by the point that this is an entirely new imaging modality offering significant advantages over current options. It isn’t a potentially or subtly better but more expensive way of performing a task that’s already done well, which is why many new medical devices fail – when something is a game-changer, all us docs want it, and as soon as possible.

I still believe firmly that EMVision's technology holds significant potential to disrupt the medical imaging field, not just in stroke but in due course in brain and body imaging more broadly. Let’s hope that commercialisation takes place in 2026 as planned, with resultant well-deserved recognition of the amazing product this company has developed, and the consequent opportunity for patients to benefit at scale.