Things are getting clearer!
It’s been a while since our last development blog post. The COVID-19 situation has pushed also us to learn new ways for working which might have had an effect for this. Amongst all the uncertainty and confusion during these times, we didn’t get lost in the haze, quite the contrary, things are getting clearer and we’re constantly gaining a better view of where we should go next and how to get there! We have been active in so many fronts and during the past months we’ve been taking significant advances from both technological and commercial sides. There’s so much to tell, but we try to keep this as short as possible.
Validating the technology and its functionalities
Let’s start from technological side! One of our main goals during our project is to validate our method and its functionalities. So far, we’ve tested our model with approximately 250 knee images with a prediction accuracy of 80%. One of the biggest factors slowing down our pre-clinical trials has been the speed of conducting a single simulation, which has taken hours so far. By modifying certain aspects in our model, we can now perform our simulations 90% faster than before. In addition, the measurements for a single knee image took us a couple minutes before, which now is pretty much automated, reducing the time in just seconds. This is obviously a huge step and helps us significantly to validate our model. We are now able to conduct a large-scale proof of concept with thousands of images with just a single click, allowing us also to make changes and test their influence much faster.
Another significant improvement regarding our technology and business preparations has been the developments in the x-ray compatibility! So far, we’ve been able to perform our predictions via MRI and CT-images. The discussions with clinicians have made it clear that we must be able to perform the predictions with x-ray images too. This is mainly because osteoarthritis is mostly diagnosed in primary healthcare with x-ray images. We just received our first results from x-ray imaging, which hugely improves the capability of our model to answer to the occurring market needs. The results were extremely satisfying and give us a good base to continue our studies! We have also successfully implemented our first treatment intervention into our prototype, which allows us to simulate the influence of weight loss on disease development. We will now continue the validation of the intervention and provide some teasers a bit later.
Regulatory documentation and software workflow
The past months we’ve been preparing for the regulatory documentation together with experts. As mentioned in our prior blog posts, we got enforcements in our team! Herkko Pulkkinen joined us, who has helped us to tackle these issues! We’ve been studying the ISO 13485 standard and laying down the foundations for medical device regulatory documentation. Together with software development experts, we’ve been analyzing the software requirements and preliminary risks analysis. We’ve also been collaborating with various industry partners, which has helped us to formulate the requirements for the software architecture and gain a concrete view of the principles of our software workflow. In general, we have gained a clearer view on how we may implement our software in hospital environments and what requirements it takes.
Networking and collaborating
On business side, we’ve been collaborating with clinicians and health care practitioners. For example, we had a workshop in Kuopio University Hospital through Kuopio Living Lab, where we were able to receive valuable insights and feedback from healthcare professionals. We have also met various investors and been collaborating with experienced mentors, who have significantly helped us by questioning our ideas and thoughts. We cannot emphasize enough how fruitful these discussions have been and how much they have guided our project forward. We’ve advanced our understanding of the commercial potential of our innovation and of the ways to capitalize it. We’ve been working to strengthen our team and surround us with experts in the field to help us with our endeavours. We’ve made huge progress on this side, which we are going to inform you more later. So, stay posted, as we might have some extremely good news coming soon!
We wish you all stay safe and healthy! Let’s stick together in these uncertain times and support each other!
Cheers from Algoa Team!
