Just a matter of time

Optiscan: One Platform, All the Way DownIf you’re looking at this as just a device company, you’re not seeing the full picture. You’re looking at the leaf, not the tree. Optiscan has done something that very few medtech players ever accomplish: built a vertically integrated ecosystem—device, software, data, and service—end to end.Short Term:They’ve just delivered an MVP cloud-based telepathology platform. That’s not a prototype—it’s a functional, secure, scalable piece of infrastructure that’s already integrated with their suite of confocal imaging devices (InVue, InForm, InVivage). This isn’t “hopium.” It’s code, in production, built for regulated healthcare workflows. That creates near-term utility and adoption pathways, particularly in remote and under-resourced settings where real-time pathology is often the bottleneck to clinical decision-making.Medium Term:What they’ve really done is built the railroads. One service—real-time pathology for surgical margin detection—is just the first carriage. Once the tracks are laid (i.e., device deployment, software integration, data pipeline, regulatory alignment), horizontal expansion into other pathology services becomes low-friction. The marginal cost of new services trends toward zero because the infrastructure already exists. Revenue scales as volume increases—not linearly, but exponentially—as more services ride the same rail.Long Term:Here’s the play: pure software AI will not survive on its own. Not in medicine. The moat in the next era isn’t algorithms—it’s owning the end-to-end patient data flow. Optiscan is positioned like Apple was when they moved from selling software to building the full stack—hardware, OS, app store, and services. Each imaging session Optiscan captures isn’t just a clinical event; it’s an asset. Every session adds to a growing dataset. Every dataset feeds into future AI and diagnostic tools. That’s continuous asset creation.The market will eventually realize: the companies that control the interface (devices), the interpretation (software/AI), and the infrastructure (cloud + workflow integration) are the ones that will endure. Everyone else will be absorbed—or dissolved.And if you're sitting there wondering if this is too early, consider this: by the time everyone agrees it's obvious, the compounding value will already be priced in.