Tiresias: Positioning

“When you are getting ready to launch into space, you are sitting on a big explosion just waiting to happen.”

Sally Ride (Astronaut)

My Friends,

Tiresias thinks that May ‘24 was the beginning of a new trajectory for Optiscan. The signal occurrence and the catalyst that launches this new phase is the adoption of Optiscan confocal laser endomicroscope (CLE) by the Mayo Clinic for their robotic surgery enterprise. It is not only that, that affirms the place of Optiscan as the “seeing microscope eye” for the new robotic age in surgery, but that it is also under the auspices of the Mayo Clinic, the single most recognisable medical institution and name in the world. It is also important to understand just how jealously the Mayo Clinic guards and protects that name. This is therefore not “just any third-party affirmation” of our technology, but it is the third-party affirmation by the Mayo Clinic. This is the name, The Mayo Clinic, so guarded so protected, that it would never allow that name o be attached to anything that it thought might not succeed and might not enhance its own name, its position, and its prestige in the world. This alone should make us very pleased and even excited.

In last week’s epistle Tiresias also touched on the technological advances that Optiscan reported with the launching of the InVue. Tiresias only touched on the implication of this new development and will certainly address it in some more detail in future epistles, but he counts this as the other booster of the May’24 take-off. This is transformative not only for the operating theatre surgical in vivo real time digital pathology, but transformative for the introduction of AI in pathology and transformative across all of pathology, with the aim, as stated by Optiscan’s managing director, “the end of biopsy”. These two signal events are certainly important but represent only the tip of the iceberg of what Tiresias expects in the near and medium term. Tiresias senses, nay sees, much more on the horizon. We the shareholders understand and are frustrated how little Optiscan is known out in the public and in the investment and financial circles. The name of Mayo Clinic will certainly bring more attention to our company. But news flow with results from the ongoing breast trial, oral cancer results and collaborations, should come. In addition, another area in which we can expect some developments are new deals in G-I, that huge market delayed but still ready for relaunch. Though the FDA, that bureaucratised behemoth of the Potomac, has delayed oral dye approval, Tiresias expects other jurisdictions, increasingly self-confident jurisdictions such as China, which are less and less in its thrall of the ossified FDA, will leapfrog this nonsensical delay, bypassing FDA logjam and show its irrelevance.

An example of just how much Optiscan is still below the radar, Tiresias noted two events this week which were very relevant to Optiscan, but which received no attention whatsoever. The first was, that for the first time ever, a patient in Beijing China, had surgery performed remotely and robotically by a surgeon in Rome Italy. What does this matter for Optiscan? Well, my friends, where there is remote robotic surgery there will be remote real time digital pathology, and there must and will be Optiscan robot eye and Optiscan real-time AI enabled surgical pathology. The Mayo Clinic has put its marker and nailed its colours to Optiscan for this future.

The second event was another third-party affirmation. Professor Farah, CEO and MD of Optiscan, just this week, was awarded the International Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathologists (IAOP) President’s Prize. With this award, Professor Farah will give the keynote President's Lecture, at the next meeting of the International Congress of Oral Pathology and Medicine to showcase and expound upon Optiscan technology in oral cancer and oral medicine. Was this noticed anywhere? Did it get any publicity in the biotech medical technology market? Is this relevant to Optiscan?

Slowly, slowly, my friends it builds and builds and then as always, the timing of take-off cannot be accurately predicted, but when it does it will come quickly.

Until next week.