“The future rewards those who press on.” Barack Obama My...

“The future rewards those who press on.”

Barack Obama

My friends,

Today, Tiresias will address Carl Zeiss and the quest to improve malignant brain tumour neurosurgery, again. As his friends well know, this is a topic that is close to his heart. It is the subject that captured his attention as to the potential of Optiscan Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy (CLE) and sustained his faith to remain a true believer for all this time. It is important to remember however, though a favourite subject of Tiresias, brain tumour surgery, ultimately, is not the biggest and will never be the most important market for Optiscan CLE technology. Nevertheless, apart from being a bit of a fetish for your friend Tiresias, success in this area, being the single most difficult in cancer treatment, success in it will be an affirmation for all the others. So, why is Carl's Zeiss taking so long?

Tiresias thinks that there are two main reasons for this. One reason is the fundamental nature of the problem of brain tumour surgery. The other is the fundamental nature of Carl Zeiss.

To address the second first. Carl Zeiss is a 19^th Century lumbering Teutonic bureaucratised medical-industrial giant, enmeshed in a medico-industrial complex of German and European Union with very different time horizons to what we, the shareholders of a start-up technology company expect. Had Carl Zeiss been a new American company, Tiresias suspects things might have progressed far more quickly. The most rapid advances and most exciting advances in the application technology using Optiscan CLE in brain tumour surgery has been at the Barrow Neurological Institute, in Phoenix Arizona. Now, my friends, it is important to remember that Carl Zeiss is not as dominant in microscope technology in America as it is in Europe. Tiresias is sure that one of Carl Zeiss’s long-term strategies in going to the Barrow Institute to increase its market share in America. As my friends know, Tiresias has worked in America, and from his contacts in America he knows that the frustration that Optiscan has had with Carl Zeiss’s approach is shared by the surgeons and the pathologists in the Barrow Institute. In fact, Tiresias knows that the Barrow has tried to engage Optiscan directly to speed up the progress. Tiresias’s friends would've noticed that a lot of the work coming now from Carl Zeiss in brain tumours is European. Though still active at the Barrow Institute, the Europeans, the Germans, Swiss, French and Italians seem to be more in tune with methodical Teutonic approach overseen by the Carl Zeiss, and Tiresias suspects that this is in part the reason for apparent tardiness. The other point to understand is that Carl Zeiss has a long-term grand strategy. It is using the CONVIVO as part of a new approach not only to get a much bigger portion of the American microscopy market operative equipment in-vivo real-time digital endomicroscopy, but to break into actual diagnostic real-time AI-enabled digital histopathology distributed, internet enabled and centred on Germany. Carl Zeiss is also using the bait of the CONVIVO, as the second arm or three-pronged suite KINEVO platform, CONVIVO enabled intra-operative brachy-radiotherapy. So, the CONVIVO is a part of a major new revolutionary approach to malignant brain tumour management. There is a lot that has to be done and must be right, from the start. Carl Zeiss will do this their way.

Now, moreover, in vivo real-time brain pathology is the single most difficult area. The brain has a lot of blood vessels and a lot of blood. It bleeds. It visibly pulsates with every heartbeat. This produces technical issues to overcome and technological improvements to perfect. Furthermore, machine learning and artificial intelligence, to assist the operating surgeon and the pathologist must be developed and tested. It is an understatement to say that is an ambitious project and it is not a surprise that Carl Zeiss has gone slower and might have frustrated us the shareholders of Optiscan. But, my friends, Tiresias is confident, in spite of the fact that slightly mocks CZ, they are going to get this right, and this demonstration, in the most difficult of all areas of cancer surgery, and not in itself the biggest or the most important area for Optiscan, will in the end result in an affirmation of our technology from which we will not look back.