NICO has the potential to be a major player in this space. Sure there are other companies around providing some form of AI stroke platform however NICO is ahead of the game. Most of the players algo's only cover 1 or 2 out of the 4 key elements that a neurologist will want in the diagnosis and treatment of a stroke in a acute setting. Simply put NICO provides the most comprehensive assessment on the market IMO. In addition to being able to identify what type of stroke, stroke volume/infarct size (which some others can do albeit not in the same precision/data read out) , NICOs collateral vessel assessment is well ahead of the competition (at the moment the only company I can see that does this is Brainomix) . This is very important to determine treatment options and is somewhat the holy grail in stroke assessment!
In addition to this the fact that NICO is used with NCCT (as opposed to CTA - require patient dye injections and creates time delays or CT perfusion which most hospital do not have access to) is a major market advantage.
This is a very large space to play in and at the moment no one has a foothold on it. Nico does not need global domination to be extremely successful. One other competitor who only assesses stroke location/volume already has 350 hospitals with another 200 to come and targeting 100,000 scans annually. At those sort of numbers NICO would be a $250+ mill MC company.
I'm expecting around 30-40 hospitals by IPO. Its an easy sell to hospital boards - it provides better treatment outcomes for patients (and better than anything available at the moment) , it will save the hospital costs and it is very easy to rollout at no expense for the hospital!
